Beneath the narrow streets of the Gothic Quarter, Roman Barcino is still standing: walls, towers, a temple and whole streets buried just a few metres down. On top, the centuries piled up a cathedral, a destroyed Jewish quarter, royal palaces and even a Gothic style invented in the twentieth century. Thirteen stops between the Roman gate of Plaça Nova, the cathedral with a modern façade, the cloister of the thirteen geese, the bridge that looks medieval but is not, the square scarred by bombs, the Jewish Call, the political heart of Catalonia, the hidden columns of the Roman temple, the palace of the kings of Aragon, the wall of Barcino, the market with the wavy roof, the neighbourhood buried in 1714 and the church built by the port's porters. Approximate audio duration: 24 minutes.
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Barcelona: dos mil años de historia apilada bajo el Barrio Gótico
Bajo las calles estrechas del Barrio Gótico sigue en pie la Barcino romana: murallas, torres, un templo y calles enteras enterradas a pocos metros de profundidad. Encima, los siglos fueron apilando una catedral, un barrio judío destruido, palacios de reyes y hasta un gótico inventado en el siglo XX. Trece paradas entre la puerta romana de la plaza Nova, la catedral de fachada moderna, el claustro de las trece ocas, el puente que parece medieval y no lo es, la plaza marcada por las bombas, el Call judío, el corazón político de Cataluña, las columnas escondidas del templo romano, el palacio de los reyes de Aragón, la muralla de Barcino, el mercado de techo ondulado, el barrio sepultado en 1714 y la iglesia que levantaron los cargadores del puerto. Duración aproximada de audio: 24 minutos.
Tour stops
13 stops · ~24 min of audio · 2.07 km on foot (~30 min walking) · about 1 h in total
You are standing in Plaça Nova. Look at the two round stone towers flanking the entrance to Carrer del Bisbe. They are not medieval: they are Roman, and this is where people walked into Barcino almost two thousand years ago.
Barcino was founded as a Roman colony under Augustus, towards the end of the first century BC. It was small: a walled rectangle of about ten hectares, with four gates. This was one of them.
Look at the ground beside the towers. Large metal letters spell out the word Barcino. They are the work of the poet Joan Brossa, from 1994, a reminder of the city's original name.
To…
2
A Medieval Cathedral with a Nineteenth-Century Face
You are in front of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross and Saint Eulalia. Look at the façade: spires, pinnacles, lace in stone. It looks like pure fourteenth century. But what you see was finished at the end of the nineteenth.
The Gothic cathedral was begun in 1298, over an earlier Romanesque one. That, in turn, stood on an early Christian basilica. Its remains, including a fourth-century baptistery, lie beneath your feet.
Work went on for centuries, but the main façade remained, for generations, a plain unfinished wall. The city grew used to seeing its cathedral that way.
In the 1880s a banke…
3
Thirteen Geese for a Thirteen-Year-Old Martyr
You are in the cathedral cloister. Palm trees, magnolias, a mossy fountain and, if you listen, honking. Find the pond: thirteen white geese live there.
They are for Eulalia, the city's ancient patron saint. According to tradition she was a girl of thirteen, martyred in the early fourth century during the persecution of the emperor Diocletian.
That is why there are thirteen. The geese are said to be white for her purity. And, more prosaically, geese have always made good guards: they raise a racket at any stranger.
Eulalia's remains lie in the crypt beneath the high altar, in a fourteenth-ce…
4
The Gothic Bridge Built in 1928
You are on Carrer del Bisbe. Look up: a bridge of pierced stone crosses the street from one building to another. It is the most famous photo in the Gothic Quarter. And probably the most misleading.
This bridge is not medieval. It was designed by the architect Joan Rubió i Bellver and built in 1928. It links the Palau de la Generalitat with the Casa dels Canonges, today the official residence of the Catalan president.
In those years Barcelona was preparing for the International Exhibition of 1929. And there was a deliberate project: to give the old centre a coherent Gothic image, in tune with…
5
The Square That Keeps the Bomb Scars
You are in Plaça de Sant Felip Neri. It is tiny and quiet, with a fountain in the middle and trees. Now go up to the church façade and run your hand over the stone: it is full of holes.
They are shrapnel marks. On 30 January 1938, in the middle of the Civil War, Italian planes of the Aviazione Legionaria, allied with Franco, bombed central Barcelona. One bomb fell in this square.
The church basement was used as a shelter, and there was a school in the building. Forty-two people died, most of them children. A plaque in the square remembers them.
For decades a story circulated that the marks …
6
The Call: the Jewish Quarter That Vanished in 1391
You are on Carrer de Marlet, in the heart of the Call, Barcelona's old Jewish quarter. Look on the wall for a stone with Hebrew letters. It is a copy; the original is kept in the City History Museum.
The inscription records a pious foundation by one Rabbi Samuel ha-Sardí and asks rest for his soul. It turned up on this street in the early nineteenth century, one of the first visible proofs that a whole community had once lived here.
The Call occupied just a few blocks between the cathedral and the old Roman wall. For centuries it was one of the most important Jewish centres in the Crown of A…
7
Two Powers Face to Face, Over the Roman Forum
You are in Plaça de Sant Jaume. On one side, the Palau de la Generalitat, seat of the Catalan government. Opposite, Barcelona City Hall. Two powers that have been eyeing each other for centuries.
It is no accident they are here. This area was the centre of Barcino. Here, or very close by, was the Roman forum, where the city's two main streets crossed. Two thousand years later, power still sits at the same crossroads.
The Generalitat was born in the Middle Ages as a commission of the Catalan parliament to collect taxes. Over time it became a government. It was abolished after 1714 and restore…
8
Four Roman Columns Hidden in a Courtyard
You are on Carrer del Paradís. Before going in, look at the ground beside the door of number 10: there is a round stone, like a millstone. It marks Mont Tàber, the small hill almost seventeen metres above the sea where Barcino was founded.
Step into the courtyard of the building, home of the Catalan Hiking Centre. And suddenly, there they are: four huge Corinthian columns, nearly nine metres tall, wedged between medieval walls.
They are what remains of Barcino's Roman temple, traditionally said to have been dedicated to the cult of the emperor Augustus. It was built towards the end of the fi…
9
The Palace of Kings and the City Below
You are in Plaça del Rei. At the back, a fan-shaped staircase climbs to the Palau Reial Major, the palace of the counts of Barcelona and kings of Aragon. On the right, a five-storey tower of galleries: King Martin's lookout.
Behind that façade is the Saló del Tinell, built between 1359 and 1370 for King Peter the Ceremonious. It is a vast hall held up by stone arches spanning more than fifteen metres, with no columns in between.
Tradition says that on these steps, or in this hall, the Catholic Monarchs received Columbus in 1493, on his return from the first voyage. That the monarchs were in …
10
The Wall That Holds Up a Royal Chapel
You are in Plaça de Ramon Berenguer el Gran, beside Via Laietana. In front of you is a long stretch of Roman wall with towers, and an equestrian statue of the count the square is named after.
Look at the wall from bottom to top. Below, large Roman stone blocks. Above, the Gothic walls of the chapel of Santa Àgata, the chapel of the royal palace you have just seen. The kings built, quite literally, on top of Rome.
Barcino's first wall was modest. In the late third and fourth centuries, under the threat of invasions, it was strengthened: thicker, taller walls and close to eighty towers along a…
11
A Market on Top of a Convent
You are in front of the Santa Caterina Market. Look up: a roof that ripples like a wave, covered with thousands of coloured ceramic tiles. They are the colours of the fruit and vegetables sold below.
The roof is the work of the architects Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue. The renovation opened in 2005. Miralles died in 2000, before seeing it finished.
But the name goes back much further. The Dominican convent of Santa Caterina stood here, founded in the thirteenth century. It was one of the great Gothic convents of the city.
In 1835, amid anticlerical riots, the convent was set on fir…
12
The Neighbourhood Buried in 1714
You are in front of the old Born market, a great nineteenth-century structure of iron and glass. Today it is the Born Centre for Culture and Memory. Go in and lean over the railing: below lie streets, houses and kitchens from three hundred years ago.
It is a piece of the Ribera district as it was in 1714. That year saw the end of the siege of Barcelona, at the close of the War of the Spanish Succession. On 11 September, after more than a year of siege, the city fell to the troops of Philip V.
The new king punished the city. He abolished the Catalan institutions and, to keep watch over Barcel…
13
The Cathedral of the Port's Porters
You are in front of Santa Maria del Mar. Beside you is a small square with a flame and a wall of rust-red steel: the Fossar de les Moreres, the cemetery where defenders of the city killed in 1714 were buried.
Now look at the church. From outside it is sober, almost unadorned. It was built in just fifty-four years, between 1329 and 1383, a remarkable speed for the time. That is why it is one of the purest examples of Catalan Gothic: no mixing of styles.
No king or bishop paid for it. It was raised by the Ribera district, the quarter of sailors, merchants and craftsmen of the port. It was thei…
How long does the "Barcelona: Two Thousand Years of History Stacked Beneath the Gothic Quarter" audio tour take?
It has about 24 minutes of audio across 13 stops and a 2.07 km walking route (~30 min on foot). Plan roughly 1 h in total, or split it up: you can pause and resume anytime.
Where does the tour start?
At stop 1, "The Gate of Barcino" (coordinates 41.38425, 2.17516). The app guides you from stop to stop with a map.
Is it free?
Trevurs is a free app for iOS and Android. There is also an optional Premium version, from USD 1.99, with unlimited offline downloads, access to every tour and no ads. It also helps keep an independent app alive.
Why use an audio tour instead of a guided group tour?
No group to keep up with and no guide to wait for. Start at any time of day, on your own schedule. Go at your own pace: pause, rewind or skip any stop. No need to commit 2 or 3 hours to a single tour: do one stop or the whole route. Works offline once downloaded.
What languages is this audio guide available in?
This tour is available in Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, Italian. Switch languages anytime from inside the app.
Do I need wifi to listen to this tour?
No. Download the tour over wifi before you go, then listen without any data connection.
How do I access this tour?
Download Trevurs on iPhone (App Store) or Android (Google Play), then open Barcelona and pick "Barcelona: Two Thousand Years of History Stacked Beneath the Gothic Quarter". No account required to start.
