Old Town of Barcelona, Spain

The Ciutat Vella is one of the ten districts of Barcelona. It is district 1 and borders Sants-Montjuïc to the south, the Eixample to the west, Sant Martí to the north, and the Mediterranean Sea to the east. It corresponds geographically to the historic center of the city. The current extension of the district corresponds approximately to compress within the walls between century XIV and century XIX, except the district of Barceloneta, which was left out.

The history of the Ciutat Vella district is the history of the beginnings of the city of Barcelona, as the district delimits, geographically, the historical center of the city. The history of a city that lived walled up until 1859 and that today is the territory that remains surrounded by Avinguda del Paral•lel, the roundabouts, Carrer de Pelai, Passeig de Lluís Companys and the park of the Citadel. Ciutat Vella is made up of four large neighborhoods that are treasured by many others that are historic, with their own strong personality and homogeneity.

To the south, we find Barceloneta, the youngest district, created in the middle of the 18th century with the excuse of relocating the displaced people from La Ribera for the construction of the Citadel; to the west, the Raval, born from the rural roads outside the city walls, which was the cradle of the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century; in the center, the Gothic Quarter, the oldest urban manifestation in Barcelona, and to the east, Sant Pere, Santa Caterina and La Ribera, the medieval extension of the city.

The urban territory of Ciutat Vella is a great framework of tensions and structural, relational and social conflicts. Existing relationships are not understood without interrelating the contribution of the past with the actions of the present. The long stay of Ciutat Vella within the walls formed a reality of minimal ventilation and perspectives. Once freed from this physical and psychological belt, it was subjected to processes of permanent degradation until the second half of the 1970s, when developmentalism was exhausted and the authoritarian municipal model gave way to the process of democratization of society.

The combination of these last two factors consolidated the foundations for a policy of urban regeneration carried out in Ciutat Vella in recent decades, during which the old systematic demolition and replacement operations have evolved to become conservation interventions and rehabilitation.

History
The current Barcelona is the result of the annexation of the old municipalities of the Barcelona plan: Les Corts de Sarrià, Sarrià, Vallvidrera, Sant Gervasi de Cassoles, Santa Maria de Sants, Gràcia, Sant Andreu de Palomar, Sant Martí de Provençals and Horta. The old municipality of Barcelona occupied what is now Ciutat Vella and the Eixample, as the latter had no population center, the old Barcelona is in what is now the district of Ciutat Vella, closed from the first Roman walluntil the last one, which dates from the 14th century and was demolished in 1854.

The history of the district begins with the founding of the city of Barcelona on Mont Tàber. The Romans chose a small hill between two streams, the Cagalell or Collserola (where the Rambla is now) and the Jonqueres or Merdançà (where the Via Laietana is now). In that place the Colonia Iulia Augusta Paterna Fauentia Barcino was founded, or simply Bàrcino, replacing the old Roman establishment of Montjuïc that is thought to be in the neighborhood that today we call the Marina de Port and that abandoned due to the alluvium dragged by the Llobregat and that prevented the use of the port.

Until the twelfth century the old Barcelona lived closed in the perimeter of the Roman wall of the fourth century, which although it was rebuilt in part by the first counts of Barcelona, it was not until the 12th century that experienced growth, the following century, in order to protect the neighborhoods that had formed around the city’s entrance roads, on the outskirts of the walls, which were known as vilanoves. Some of these were La Bòria, Sant Pere de les Puel•lesand Vilanova de Mar. The latter grew around the church of Santa Maria de las Arenas, now better known as Santa Maria del Mar. To the west, another vilanova was also formed around the collegiate church of Santa Anna, where the Rambla is now.

District
The Ciutat Vella district is delimited by the perimeter of the old city wall and corresponds geographically to the historic center of Barcelona. Ciutat Vella is the first district of Barcelona, the embryo of the city. Therefore, to speak of Ciutat Vella is to speak of the history of the city from its beginnings. The district is bordered on the west by the Eixample, on the east by the Mediterranean Sea, on the north by Sant Martí and on the south by Sants-Montjuïc. Ciutat Vella is made up of four neighborhoods, each of which has its own uniqueness. To the south is Barceloneta; to the west, the Raval; in the center, the Gothic, and to the east, Sant Pere, Santa Caterina and La Ribera. Ciutat Vella is a district that offers everything: culture, heritage, history, neighborhood and entertainment.

The Barceloneta district
To the south we find the seafaring district of Barcelona and also the youngest district of the Ciutat Vella district, Barceloneta.

The neighborhood was based on land gained from the sea since the 15th century, when the port breakwater was built (1474) and a slow sedimentation of soils and sands was generated from the Besòs and the adjacent coast around the island of Maians, located approximately where the facilities of the station of France are. The most immediate precedent for the construction of the neighborhood is the project of the captain general Marquis of Castel-Rodrigo, who on October 3, 1718 determined the creation of the neighborhood of La Playa, in order to house the citizens who had seen the demolition of the their houses on the occasion of the construction of the citadel in La Ribera. This project was commissioned from military engineer Prospero Verboom.

The military engineer Juan Martín Cermeño, on the initiative of the Captain General Marquis of La Mina, began, in 1749, a new and definitive project that responded in a model way to a complex set of needs: to put an end to the disorganization of the constructions of the Arenal and face the shortage of housing in the walled Barcelona, anticipate the insufficiency of the medieval port and its facilities and also have military control of the population settled on a site of unbeatable strategic position. The need to build the new neighborhood as compensation for the demolition of the houses of La Ribera is mentioned secondarily.

The project envisaged a large urbanization with an octagonal layout, consisting of fifteen streets parallel to the port, 7.5 meters wide, crossed by three other cross-sections, 9.3 meters. The houses, with a ground floor and a first floor, intended, in principle, for a single family and owned, were uniform in terms of dimensions (8.4 by 8.4 meters), materials, distribution and external decoration. They were lined up on extremely elongated, narrow rectangular islands. The construction of Barceloneta has been considered one of the best examples of peninsular Baroque town planning. The will to fight against the natural unhealthiness of those lands and to make them habitable was present when the full insolation of the streets with the minimum height of the houses was assured, and by the fact that the narrowness of the islands of houses rectangular, built with a north-south orientation, sheltered from the east wind, allowed all the rooms to have windows to the outside and, therefore, cross ventilation between the two facades.

Until the middle of the 19th century, the activities of the inhabitants of Barceloneta were essentially related to the sea: fishing, port activities, the construction of sailing ships and the manufacture and sale of equipment. In 1846, Barcelona City Council banned the installation of new industries with steam engines inside the walled enclosure. Many of the existing and newly created ones were built in the nearest towns, outside the walls: Sants, Poblenou and Barceloneta. It was then that industrialization began to penetrate the neighborhood. The proximity to the port, which facilitated the loading of heavy machinery and the unloading of raw materials, the building space, and since 1848 the Mataró railway station under the Portal de Mar, they were elements that the industrialists took into account. In 1841 Barceloneta was already the second metallurgical town in Catalonia after Barcelona, with the foundries and, above all, the Nueva Vulcano workshops (1836).

With the installation of the first gasometer (1840), which had obtained the concession of the city’s lighting, the second industrial specialization was born in Barceloneta: gas production. During the second half of the 19th century, the settlement of important metal industries (the Alexander workshops in 1845, the Land and Maritime Machinist in 1855) confirmed the process begun. By the end of the 19th century, the specializations of Barceloneta’s industry had been well defined: metallurgy, gas and shipbuilding. From the twenties of the twentieth century began the process of disappearance of large industrial establishments in the neighborhood, caused by factors such as increased competition and lack of capital to generate expansion. The companies that they remained there were the object of destruction and new forms of organization (collectivizations) during the Civil War of 1936-1939. Then they slowly picked up the pace.

From the middle of the twentieth century other industrial sectors were established in the neighborhood. These were, in particular, carpentry workshops, furniture and printing press construction, small chemical factories, jewelery and watchmaking workshops, clothing workshops, and so on. The large ships were replaced by small workshops where the most diverse specialties were developed: metal constructions, electrical and mechanical machinery, or repairs of cars, radios or televisions. These changes were due to causes such as the use of housing for a neighborhood necessary for a growing city, and because of the high density could only provide the small area of the basement of houses in an industry still urban and of little investment.

Since the demolition of the walls of Barcelona and especially with the creation of two tram lines that connected the city center with the baths, the industrial and port Barceloneta was also transformed into the city’s spa. From here began the manifest tertiarisation of services at the end of the twentieth century (hospitality, leisure, etc.).

The Gothic district
In the center is the neighborhood where the city of Barcelona was born, the Gothic.

The Gothic Quarter is the oldest part of the city and its historic center, and is where most of the buildings and streets with historical significance in the city are located. Over the centuries it has assumed the role of center of political and institutional representation. The Gothic Quarter is made up, at the same time, of different historical districts that retain their own personality: the Call, Sant Just i Pastor, Santa Maria del Pi, the Cathedral, Santa Anna, La Mercè and the Palau.

The historical urbanization axes of the neighborhood correspond to the Roman thistle and decumanus in the highest part of the ancient Mount Tàber (Plaça de Sant Jaume).

The structure of the neighborhood came intact until the 19th century, although the internal morphology had changed drastically during the 18th century due to the great densification it underwent; the large houses were subdivided into irregular and lacking services, all the plots were taken advantage of, the orchards that still existed were removed, poorly lit and poorly ventilated rooms were created and the old houses were demolished. to build new ones with a disproportionate increase in height. The nineteenth century will be one of the great transformations in the structure and morphology of the Gothic. The transformation of parish cemeteries into public squares, the emptying of large buildings with the consequent change of use, the demolition of the walls and other urban actions caused the Gothic to begin to be seen as a collective heritage of prestige and as a value of use for its territorial and historical centrality, which had to be preserved.

The heritage value that the neighborhood represents, the variety and differences of the other neighborhoods that make it up, and, therefore, the complexity of the urban processes that take place there, have led it to specialize in the tertiary sector. activity, and has become the most important trade center in Barcelona and Catalonia.

The Raval district
To the west we find the neighborhood with the most cultural offer in all of Europe, the Raval.

Before the 14th century, the Raval district was only an open field with cultivated land that covered the city of Barcelona. In Roman Barcelona there were local roads that drew the outline that the neighborhood had later. The monastery of Sant Pau del Camp was the first important nucleus of the Raval, before the 10th century, around which there was a small medieval town linked to the monastery. The growth of Barcelona shaped the Raval in the space that takes the form of a diamond between the second belt of walls (James I in 1268, the Rambla) and the third and last belt (Pere el Cerimoniós, 1348, the rounds and the avenue of the Parallel).

The Raval was located on the margins of the main roads: the Portal dels Tallers, through which farmers entered goods to supply Barcelona; the Portal de Sant Antoni, the most important access in the city, and the Porta de Santa Madrona, next to the Drassanes, the only one that remains standing. The city of Barcelona was drowned by the walls of James I, and Peter the Ceremonious decided to make the third walled belt. It was necessary to ensure the expectations of urban growth. There was the general tendency of many cities of the time, to encircle within the walls the extent of land sufficient to provide for the subsistence of the inhabitants in times of wars and sieges. Another reason was to locate the most annoying or unrecommended establishments, services and activities outside the city center. But all expectations of the city’s growth were dashed. In the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, due to economic difficulties (maritime trade shifted to the Atlantic),

Between the 15th century and the confiscation of Mendizábal in 1837, the Raval became a “land of convents”. The large amount of building land gave rise to the installation of religious orders in the framework of the Counter-Reformation promoted by the Council of Trent (1543-1563).

At the beginning of the 18th century, industries began to be set up in the middle of orchards, convents and guild houses. The ban on the import of printed fabrics in 1718 favored the emergence of manufacturing. Between 1770 and 1840, the definitive industrialization of the Raval district took place. From the second half of the 1700s new streets began to appear with factories and housing for workers. The guild houses disappeared or were subdivided into many rented houses to accommodate the many peasants fleeing famine in the countryside (agricultural crisis of 1765-1766). The factory workers stayed to live in the Raval, close to work. This neighborhood became the densest in Europe and was used to the last square meter buildable.

The working days were twelve hours (from five in the morning until eight in the evening). In 1829, according to the register of manufacturers, there were 74 textile manufacturers, 2,443 looms and 657 spinning machines in the Raval. The Bonaplata factory stood out, located in Carrer dels Tallers. It had between 600 and 700 workers and was the first steam-powered. The culmination of this whole process was the installation known as the factory house, where the factory facilities, the institutional representation and the residence of the manufacturer coincided. This is the case of Industrial Spain, in 1839, in Carrer de la Riereta. The Raval was the only place within the walls where large buildings could be built, as it was unattractive to do so outside due to political instability (Carlism and banditry). Besides,

The maintenance of low wages, long working hours, the closure of factories as a show of strength for manufacturers, the abolition of the charity soup and the persecution of workers’ associations caused it to explode on July 2, 1855. a strike under the general slogan of the right of association and the ten-hour working day. Workers’ revolts against modern mechanization and various cholera epidemics led to the decision to demolish the walls in 1859 and allow urban and industrial expansion outside an unhealthy and easily controllable urban core by a labor movement that he was beginning to organize. The business exodus to the Barcelona plan began in the early 1960s.

A long list of manufacturers left the neighborhood following the hygienic theories of Ildefons Cerdà. In the new city model, the Raval occupied a peripheral situation as a working-class residential neighborhood. At the beginning of the twentieth century it continued to have an eminently working-class social composition. The movements of the neighborhood reached an importance that went beyond its borders. In 1870 the I Spanish Workers’ Congress was held; in 1871 the main union Catalan time, textile, joined the First International, and in 1888, the street came the announcement of workshops to gather all the delegates from Spain to found the UGT in the same neighborhood. The movements of the neighborhood reached an importance that went beyond its borders.

The Raval became more and more a housing district for the classes with less purchasing power, among which immigrants (universal exhibitions of 1888 and 1929) were a prominent part. This proletarian extraction played an important role during the Tragic Week.

The human overcrowding, a narrow and winding road network, the proximity of the port and the dedication of many buildings to bars, performance halls and houses of tolerance, ended up forming an area south of the Raval that, towards the year In 1925, the journalist Àngel Marsà named it Barri Xinès. The destruction of the war and the post-war misery greatly damaged the nightlife of the neighborhood, in a process that ended the decree to close the brothels in 1956.

The first voices calling for the improvement of the neighborhood arose in the thirties, during the Second Republic (1931-1936), with the proposals of the architects of the GATCPAC. The Macià plan provided rationalist and integrated solutions to the problems of the neighborhood. But first the Spanish Civil War and then the long Franco dictatorship condemned the Raval to an even greater urban and social degradation. During the eighties, the Administration promoted a determined policy of reforms and rehabilitation of housing, opening of spaces and creation of facilities for the community, which was leaving in the background the name of Chinatown, and the historical denomination of the Raval was recovered.

Sant Pere, Santa Caterina and La Ribera
To the east is the medieval area of the city, the neighborhood of Sant Pere, Santa Caterina and La Ribera.

Sant Pere and Santa Caterina are two neighborhoods that still maintain their medieval structure. Narrow, twisted and intertwined streets maintain an activity rooted in its origins: textile work, now transformed into commercial activity. Sant Pere, Santa Caterina and Sant Agustí are names related to the great religious institutions that existed in the area. Today only the testimony of the church of Sant Pere de les Puelles remains. To the south, closer to the sea, is the Ribera district, formerly Vilanova del Mar, presided over by the Basilica of Santa Maria del Mar, the center of the city’s stately life from the 13th to the 14th century.

These neighborhoods were set up from the moment when Barcelona needed to expand outside the Roman precincts. From the 11th century, around the monasteries of Sant Pere de les Puelles and Santa Maria del Mar, which exercised feudal dominion over the lands around them, and along the Rec Comtal, the new urban network was formed. These neighborhoods were nothing more than suburbs of Roman Barcelona in the eastern part of the city, which formed a conglomeration of neighborhoods that grew until the walls stopped them. The new routes of the branches of the Roman city began to populate, and the Comtal canal, an important watercourse that entered old Barcelona from the river Besòs, was a focus of attraction of textile industries of industrial pre-revolution, which were installed there.

At the southern end, the maritime tradition of the neighborhood and the Ribera formed a unit dating from the tenth century, in which there was already an inhabited nucleus outside the walls near the beach around a church called Santa Maria de les Arenas (today Santa Maria del Mar). With the splendor of maritime trade in the 13th century, during the time of James I, the nucleus was consolidated and most of the city’s trades were concentrated there, as evidenced by the toponymy (Espaseria, Mirallers, Needles, Esparteria, Hats, Lowerers, Hoods, etc.) and some basic services of the urban infrastructure (slaughterhouses, mills, dyes, etc.). The splendor of this neighborhood lasted until the decline of commercial traffic in the Mediterranean in the sixteenth century.

The medieval building was replaced throughout the second half of the 18th century, when fabric manufactures settled on the streets in the area and this expansion created a new demand for labor and housing. Over time, population growth in the area reached incredible extremes and was the cause of more than one epidemic. The confiscation of 1835 did not free up land for social uses, but for the creation of factory houses. As an exception, the Santa Caterina market was created in 1848, today completely remodeled by the team of the architect Enric Miralles. The demolition of the walls and the construction of the Eixample influenced the proletarianization of the neighborhood during the 19th century.

This meant a tightening of the neighborhood with the presence of textile factories, which gradually, due to lack of space, they moved to the Raval or outside the walls. The creation of the Eixample, as in other cities in Europe, produced a process of replacement of the inhabitants of the old town who belonged to the well-to-do class by immigrants occupying subdivided housing, with an obvious lack of essential services, which with the over time they deteriorated considerably. Many noble houses were divided so that the working people could live there, with a remarkable impoverishment of living conditions. Carrer de la Princesa was opened in 1835 (it went from Plaça Nova to Carrer del Comerç) in an attempt to oxygenate the area. The current neighborhoods of Sant Pere and Santa Caterina were definitively separated, in a transversal way, from the neighborhood of La Ribera, with very different realities to the north and south of this street.

During Tragic Week, in July 1909, many religious buildings were burned as a form of popular protest and a reflection of the poor living conditions in the neighborhood. The poor health situation caused, in 1914, between the neighborhoods of Sant Pere, Santa Caterina and La Ribera, 310 deaths from typhus, 5% of all deaths in Barcelona.

In the first decade of the twentieth century there was a major event, the urban plan that led to the construction of the Via Laietana; 2,199 homes were demolished and 82 streets disappeared completely or partially with the social cost that all this entailed. The Via Laietana meant the fragmentation of the urban unit of the historic center into two distinct halves: on the one hand, the Gothic Quarter, and, on the other, the neighborhoods of Sant Pere, Santa Caterina and La Ribera.

The proximity of the station of France and the port attracted most of the people who arrived in Barcelona for the work generated by the 1929 Universal Exposition and the works of the metro. In 1945, 32.3% of the neighborhood’s residents were immigrants. The presence of relocates was abundant and the neighborhood became one of the densest urban areas in Europe. The housing conditions in the neighborhood were the worst in Barcelona. Vertical and horizontal shantytowns were commonplace and the overcrowding did not begin to decline until the late 1960s. The sponging advocated by the Administration – axis of the avenue of Cambó – in the eighties, with the plans of inner reform, has looked for a balance in the old urban fabric,

On the other hand, La Ribera is now experiencing a revival as a leisure area discovered by independent and experimental artists. Nightclubs, whose pioneers were Zeleste and Màgic, complemented by art galleries and antiques that are articulated around the street of Montcada, make La Ribera a neighborhood dedicated to the specialization of leisure services.

Main Attractions
Enjoy attractions of the old town, urban spaces, cultural and architectural heritage, natural spaces, museums, leisure and leisure centers, study centers, proposals for shopping or sports and much more.

Carrer de la Portaferrissa
Carrer de la Portaferrissa is a busy and emblematic street in the historic center of the city of Barcelona. It stretches from La Rambla to Plaça de la Cucurulla, from which the street of the same name and Carrer dels Boters are born. In the past, the street was very noisy and dirty, because it was occupied mainly by locksmiths who often worked on the street, which led to repeated complaints from residents at the Consell de Cent.

According to the ethnologist Joan Amades, the street was built on a path that bordered primitive Barcelona at the turn of Mount Tàber. The citizens respected these traditional routes as they settled outside the Roman enclosure. The name of the street is given by the medieval portal Portal de la Ferrissa which was at the end of the street and which was one of the eight entrances to the second wall of Barcelona. This portal was built around 1260 when the Rambla wall was erected. The door was heavily nailed and had irons that served as a pattern for the ” cane.”and to contrast the particular longitudinal measuring rods. These solid irons motivated that already in a document of 1374 a hostel near the ‘iron door’ was mentioned; therefore, the name of the portal dates at least from the century xiv. it would be the passage of the route would take the name of the site, however, in 1465 the street was still treated as an extension of “street Cucurella” which corresponds to the current Cucurulla street.

In 1680, the rector of the church of Bethlehem asked the Council of One Hundred to move the fountain at the beginning of Carrer del Carme, installed in 1604, in order to build a chapel in the church. The body finally approved the change of location and since then, it is located at the beginning of Portaferissa Street. The fountain, of the same name, became crowded for centuries as a water collection point. The ceramic motif present today is the work of Joan Baptista Guivernau and was accompanied by a historical account of the fountain by Pere Voltes in 1959. The mural represents the daily bustle of the Portal de la Ferrissa during the 18th century and the image of Sant Josep Oriol is included in the upper center. In the middle of the 18th century, a small stall selling anise and water with sugar was set up next to the fountain, which was quite successful; this practice spread to many of the city’s fountains. Over the years, this hut was eventually established in an adjoining shop with an exit to La Rambla and was maintained until well into the nineteenth century.

Pelai Street
The Calle Pelayo is a street in the city of Barcelona which marks the boundary between the districts of Ciutat Vella and the Eixample. It starts from Plaça de la Universitat and reaches Plaça de Catalunya. The name refers to King Pelai of Asturias. It is one of the main shopping streets in the city. At number 54 is the building of the Damians warehouses (later El Siglo, and currently C&A), made in collaboration by Eduard Ferrés, Lluís Homs and Ignasi Mas (1915). On the street was the headquarters of the newspaper La Vanguardia, now converted into a hotel.

Avinguda del Portal de l’Àngel
The Portal de l’Angel, is a street pedestrian Gothic Quarter of Barcelona. The avenue runs from Plaça de Catalunya and ends at Carrer de Cucurulla, which continues its route until it connects with Carrer de la Portaferrissa. They include the old portal of the Angel and the square of Santa Anna. It is currently one of the main shopping streets in the city and there are a large number of shops and buildings belonging to multinationals and large corporations. Its name derives from the opening of one of the city’s portalswall of Barcelona. It has had different names: Puerta del Ángel; Pl. Santa Ana (joins); Fivaller, before 1865; and Porta dels Orbs in medieval times.

In the High Middle Ages this area was outside the Roman and county walls, and through this place a stream flowed down, which then twisted to pass in front of the church of El Pi and flowed into the Cagalell or Merdançar (a which ran along the Ramblas and was so named because all the wastewater and pestilence would end up there), and one of the roads that left the city from the Bishop’s portal passed through it. Towards the 10th century, when suburbs – the new villages – were formed outside the walls, construction began around the road, in what has been called Vilanova dels Arcs and when the 13th century wall was built, a portal was opened here called “dels Orbs” because the blind met there, and all sorts of poor and miserable people, who lived in huts not far away.

Plaça Reial
The Royal Plaza is located next to the Ramblas, in Barcelona’s Old Town. It was so named because it was intended to be dedicated to King Ferdinand VII, who ruled during the time of construction, and also to glorify the monarchy. It is one of the most distinguished squares in Barcelona. It is located down the Rambla on the left and is one of the few porticoed squares in the city, which gives it character and makes it exceptional. It borders Rambla dels Caputxins, Carrer de Ferran, Carrer de Colom and Carrer d’Escudellers. He also encounters the first covered passage that was made in Barcelona, that of Bacardí, not very well preserved. At first, before it was built, it had been thought to be called “Spanish Heroes’ Square”, but after a few years with different construction options and due to the absolutism implemented by Ferdinand VII, it was ordered to eliminate all those names. of streets and squares related to liberalism.

It is a square that communicates with the Rambla along Carrer de Colom and, through Passatge de Madoz, in Carrer de Ferran, in a space that had left the confiscated Capuchin convent. In 1848 the City Council convened a public competition won by the architect Francesc Daniel Molina Casamajó, trained at the Llotja and at the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts. The square has a rectangular porticoed floor plan, built between 1848 and 1960, and became one of the architect’s most important projects, very active in the city of Barcelona with other projects.

The neoclassical style squareis a version of the traditional Spanish “Plaça Major” connected by streets and passages that lead to the Rambla, Carrer d’Escudellers and Carrer de Ferran. The facades of the buildings are of Elizabethan model; the balconies alternate with the pilasters on the porticoed ground floor. In the entablature we find a slightly recessed attic where the cornice is a balustrade. This order in the façades is only broken by the Passatge de Bacardí, the first shed in Barcelona and the Passatge discovered by Madoz. An iron fountain in the Durenne house in Paris, called the Three Graces, was placed in the center of the square, but according to the original project, a sculpture by Ferdinand the Catholic was commissioned from Josep Piquer. In the square we find no reference to Spanish royalty, but it originally paid homage to royalty and Elizabeth II laid the first stone. In the square there are also two central lanterns designed by Gaudí and a set of palm trees.

King’s Square
The Plaça del Rei is one of the most emblematic places of the city of Barcelona, located in the Gothic Quarter. It preserves the rectangular layout derived from the urbanization project that was carried out during the reign of Martí l’Humà, in the second half of the fourteenth century. This project aimed to create an elongated square where tournaments could be held and thus eliminate the market that was traditionally held there. The Plaza del Rey has been the historic seat of county and royal power in the city.

It is a monumental square, surrounded by Gothic and Renaissance buildings and closed on all sides except the southwest end, where it communicates with the Cathedral through the Descent of Santa Clara and the street of the Bookstore in through Carrer del Veguer. On the north side, the façade of the Gothic Royal Palace stands out, with the tower of the Mirador del Rei Martí at the far left, from where you can get a good view of the medieval city. On the right, the steps leading to the Saló del Tinell and the chapel of Santa Àgata, the façade of which closes the square on the east side. The south-east side contains the Padellàs house, home of theBarcelona History Museum, a Gothic house that was moved here from Carrer dels Mercaders when Via Laietana opened. The west side is occupied by the Renaissance Palau del Lloctinent, from the 16th century.

At the southeast end of the square is the sculpture Topos V, by Eduardo Chillida. In this same space, there was for many years one of the columns of the Temple of Augustus, which today can be visited in the courtyard of the Center Excursionista de Catalunya, in Carrer del Paradís. Due to its almost closed structure and its sound, it is a place where music concerts and other shows are traditionally held.

Rambla del Raval
La Rambla del Raval is a boulevard in Barcelona located in the Raval district of the Ciutat Vella district. Despite its name, it has no origin in any stream that passes through the area. The boulevard is a space of recent creation, it was created from the Central Plan of the Raval of Ciutat Vella, in this area there were houses. It includes the streets of Sant Jeroni and de la Cadena, which are integrated into the new space.

Palace of the Generalitat de Catalunya
The Palau de la Generalitat is the seat of the Presidency of the Generalitat de Catalunya. Like the one in Valencia, it is one of the few buildings of medieval origin in Europe that remains the seat of the government and the institution that built it, the Generalitat de Catalunya. It is in the Gothic Quarter of the city of Barcelona in Plaça de Sant Jaume, in front of the Casa de la Ciutat. The Palau de la Generalitat is one of the most precious symbols of Catalonia, among other reasons because it has managed to overcome historical and political contingencies and because it is erected, together with the Palau delParliament, in a bastion of democracy in Catalonia.

The old building was part of the Jewish quarter of Barcelona. It consisted of the grouping of properties originally of Jews, among them that of the Jewish financier and poet Moixé Natan and the houses belonging to the Jewish physicist, doctor and surgeon from Banyoles Bonjuhà Cabrit. In the plunder of the Jews who suffered in 1391 it passed into the hands of the son of a royal treasurer. Later, it was acquired by the money changer Pere Brunet, who finally sold it to three deputies on December 3, 1400 to form the Diputació del General de Catalunya.

It had the entrance by the street of Sant Honorat and arrived until the street of the Bishop, where there was an orchard. During the 15th century, other buildings were gradually acquired: towards the current Plaça de Sant Jaume, some houses of the apothecary Esteve Satorre; and to the north side, the band nearest the Cathedral.

City Hall of Barcelona
The City Council is one of the four public administrations with political responsibility in the city of Barcelona, next to the Government of the State of Spain, the Generalitat of Catalonia and the Barcelona Provincial Council. It has its historical origins in the Council of One Hundred. Since 1979, its political leaders have been elected by universal suffrage by the citizens of Barcelona with the right to vote, in elections held every four years. Its current mayoress is Ada Colau i Ballano, who heads a minority government team made up of the Barcelona en Comú coalition. Colau replaced Xavier Trias in early June of 2015, and thus became the first woman to get the mayor of the city. The City Council has its headquarters in the Casa de la Ciutat, in Plaça de Sant Jaume in Barcelona, just in front of the Palau de la Generalitat de Catalunya.

Barcelona City Council is an institution that dates back to the reign of James I, in 1249, when a Council of nobles was appointed who, together with the assembly of citizens, took care of the affairs of interest of the community and the good government of the territory of Barcelona. In 1284, the Recognoverunt proceres privilege codified the set of customs valid for Barcelona and its territory, as well as the Consell de Cent as the city’s governing institution. This institution evolved over the centuries with the political, social, economic and legal events of Catalonia and Spain until the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, when Philip Vhe undid the organization of the Catalan councils or universities with the Decree of New Plant to establish the regiment or city council.

This new form of local regime was abolished, along with the other institutions of feudal origin, by the Cortes de Cádiz of 1812, which gave a new configuration to the constitutional councils, and by the successive reforms and laws that affected the local organization and were decreed throughout the nineteenth century until the Municipal Statute of Primo de Rivera (1924), which led to the recapitulation of administrative reforms of the first quarter of the twentieth century and granted a new normative corpus to the local administration, which would be maintained for much of the Francoist time.

City House
The Casa de la Ciutat de Barcelona is the building and headquarters of Barcelona City Council. It is located in the historic center of the city, in Plaça de Sant Jaume, in front of the Palau de la Generalitat de Catalunya. Its construction has taken place over several centuries. Its main façade, located in Plaça de Sant Jaume, dates from 1847; its origin, however, is from the year 1369, the year in which the construction of the Saló de Cent began.

The building is a palace. Its main façade is in neoclassical style and was designed by Josep Mas i Vila, and the façade facing Carrer Ciutat is in Gothic style, created by Arnau Bargués. The inner courtyard, also in Gothic style but with Renaissance traces, dates from 1391, and shows several sculptures by authors such as Josep Llimona, Joan Miró and Josep Clarà. Other notable rooms are the Hall of One Hundred, the Hall of Chronicles, the Hall of the Queen Regent and the Chapel of Good Counsel.

Barcelona Cathedral
The Cathedral of Santa Creu i Santa Eulàlia is the Gothic cathedral of Barcelona, the seat of the Archdiocese of Barcelona. The cathedral was built during the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries on the same site where there had been a Romanesque cathedral, and even earlier a Paleo – Christian cathedral. The facade, of style Gothic, modern (Century XIX). The building is an Asset of Cultural Interest and, since November 2, 1929, a National Historic Artistic Monument.

The cathedral is dedicated to the Holy Cross, its main devotion, and to Saint Eulalia, patron saint of Barcelona, a young virgin who, according to Christian tradition, suffered martyrdom during Roman times. The dedication of the temple to the Holy Cross, very unusual, is one of the oldest in the Christian world and probably dates back to the mid- seventh century. The dedication to Saint Eulalia has been known since 877, when Bishop Frodo located the remains of the saint and solemnly moved them to the cathedral.

Parks and gardens
Ciutat Vella is the center of Barcelona and, for this reason, does not have a wide range of outdoor spaces. However, the Ciutadella Park, the Barceloneta Park, the Cascades Park and the gardens of Sant Pau del Camp are ideal places to walk and enjoy the district.

Beaches
Ciutat Vella and Sant Martí are the only two districts in the city that have beaches. Ciutat Vella has four large beaches, which together add up to an area of 2,024 meters. The beaches of Ciutat Vella are Sant Sebastià, Sant Miquel, Barceloneta and Somorrostro. La Barceloneta is the oldest and most traditional beach in Barcelona. In addition, it has an area for people with disabilities that has a bathroom support service. The four beaches have showers, public toilets, adapted services and many other facilities to facilitate the day at the beach.

San Sebastian beach.
Located on the western side of the city of Barcelona, it is, with Barceloneta, the oldest and most traditional beach.

Sant Miquel beach.
Located between the beaches of Sant Sebastià and Barceloneta, it owes its name to the church of Sant Miquel del Port, built in 1755.

Barceloneta beach.
It is located between the Gas breakwater, also known as the Geneva breakwater, and Sant Miquel beach.

Somorrostro beach.
Approximately 522 meters long, Somorrostro beach is located between the Gas breakwater and the Marina pier.