Recinte Modernista Sant Pau

Posted on June 22, 2023 by admin

And this is?

You guessed it, a former hospital. More specifically, the entrance building to Recinte Modernista Sant Pau in Barcelona (as its web site seems to style it in Catalan). Formerly, Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau. I defer to the succinct article about the place in Atlas Obscura.

“In the late 19th century, Barcelona was expanding beyond its old city walls, and beyond the Hospital de la Santa Creuwhich had served the city since the early 1400s. In 1896 a wealthy Catalan banker named Pau Gil i Serra died, leaving behind a will that requested his estate be used for a new hospital that would utilize the newest available medical technology.

“Catalan architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner designed the site, which would represent the merging of six of Barcelona’s hospitals… Sixteen of the structures were built in the Modernist style and, though guidebooks and tourists often overlook the site, make up the largest Art Nouveau site in the world.”

“The Hospital de Sant Pau was fully functioning until 2009, when a new building, erected in the northern half of the complex, took over the duties. Several of the historic buildings were refurbished over the next several years. The site, designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997, reopened to the public in 2014.”

A few details.

Not to neglect the detail underfoot.

Murals and mosaics.

In its time as a healthcare campus, each building had a specialty, or set of specialties. The buildings opened onto gardened plazas; windows provided natural light to the building interiors. Many more modern hospitals are still playing catchup in those regards. Restoration work began in 2009 and is ongoing.

Some of the interiors are exhibits, such as a recreation of an early 20th-century hospital room, when the facility was new.

Some wards are unrestored, and there’s scaffolding on some of their outsides.

Other buildings house various international NGOs associated with health, such as the Barcelona office of Eurorids, Rare Diseases Europe.

The front building is event space.

Gobsmacked, I was. The place made me smack my gob. Amazingly unlike any notion I have of a hospital. Guess I have to revise my notions of what hospitals can look like.

Castell de Montjuïc

Posted on June 21, 2023 by admin

Late in the afternoon of our last day in Barcelona, May 22, on the way back from Montserrat, we spotted this building from a distance.

We weren’t sure what it was, and it was too far to wander over for a look considering we’d spent the day on our feet, bringing them to a slow-burn. I’ll figure it out later, I thought, and so I have: it is the Palau Nacional (National Palace). Main site of the 1929 world’s fair and current home to the National Art Museum of Catalonia.

This is the view back to where we were at that moment. Ah, well. Metro Barcelona’s a big place; can’t see everything in a few days.

The palace is on Montjuïc (Jewish Mount), a broad hill overlooking the city and the Mediterranean. It is large enough that, when we visited Castell de Montjuïc a few days before, we didn’t realize the palace was up there as well.

Plus a lot of other things: some former Olympic structures; the Magic Fountain of Montjuïc – I assume that’s a fanciful name – Fundació Joan Miró (a museum); a large cemetery including the graves of Miró, doomed Catalonia President Lluís Companys, anarchist Buenaventura Durruti, and about a million other permanent residents; a medieval Jewish cemetery; some botanic gardens and some other museums. Enough sights for another couple of days, at least.

Castell de Montjuïc is a fortress dating from the mid-18th century, though there were earlier fortifications up there. One way to get there is by cable car. I knew that because before the trip my friend Tom Jones had told me about a cable car ride he took up to a cool fortress during his visit to Barcelona some years ago, though he couldn’t remember the name; and then from the roof of Barcelona Cathedral on our first day in town, we saw a cable car running up the hill. We determined to go.

First you ride the subway to a stop at the base of the hill. Then you ride a funicular that is part of the transit system (our five-day cards were good on it) part way up the hill. Then you ride a cable car, which costs extra, to the walls of the former fortress.

The flag of Spain wasn’t to be seen on the walls. That means one thing for sure: Franco is still dead.

Tom was right. It’s a cool old pile of stones.

With a cruel past down the centuries, up to fairly recent times. Republicans and Nationalists both languished in its cells.

A set of reproduced photos notes that Companys was executed in the courtyard in 1940. He got away from Franco for a short while, but didn’t go far enough. Vichy France handed him over.

In our time, the fortress is a peaceful place with terrific views of the city.

And of the sea, which reveals a Barcelona of little interest to most tourists, but of considerable importance to the regional economy.

Barcelona is, and has always been, a port for commerce, and is among the top 10 container ports in the EU. Note also the cruise ships behind the container terminal. I assume that’s where they dock to turn loose their hordes. They’re the reason I had to book the Sagrada Familia ahead of time.

One more thing: a small plaque marking an important spot in the history of measurement. Especially for the French. The castle was one of the few places in Barcelona we saw signs in Catalan, Spanish, English and French. Usually tourist signs were only in the first three of those languages, which might well annoy the French. Heh.

Anyway, this plaque was French only, concerning the history of the meter.

The meter was to be one ten-millionth of the distance from the Equator to the North Pole, according to French revolutionists, but how to determine the length?

“In 1792, astronomers Pierre Méchain and Jean-Baptiste Delambre set out to measure the meter by surveying the distance between Dunkirk, France, and Barcelona, Spain,” explains NIST. “After seven or so years of effort, they arrived at their final measure and submitted it to the academy, which embodied the prototype meter as a bar of platinum.”

The southern end point for their measurements was atop Montjuïc, as noted by the plaque. I’m sure the French scientists did their best, but this was the 18th century, after all, and they didn’t quite measure it right. Peu importe, a meter is a meter. (The length of the path traveled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299792458 of a second; easy to remember, no?)

One of the cooler things to find on this Catalan pile of stones, I think.

Palau Güell

Posted on June 20, 2023 by admin

More Gaudí. More Güell. Visit Barcelona, and they come up time and again. If you have an interest in the built environment, that is, or follow guidebook and web site recommendations.

Gaudí wasn’t always so well known among English-speakers, if my 1929 EB is any indication. He has no entry. Neither does Eusebi Güell, which is a bit more surprising, considering his prominence as a Catalan industrialist – foodstuffs, wine, cement, more – in the freewheeling late 19th century, and indeed as a local politician and one of the richest men in Spain. Of course, we moderns have found skeletons in his closet, or at least the family closet, by modern standards.

These days, Güell is best known as a patron of Gaudí, who (among many other things) designed him a mansion in the 1880s that is posh almost beyond belief: Palau Güell.

The mansion is just off La Rambla. We strolled for a time down that thoroughfare, as much of Barcelona and its tourists seem to do all of the time, and had jim-dandy seafood al fresco at tourist prices (entirely worth it) at a small joint near the entrance of La Boqueria market, which was closed for Sunday.

La Rambla looked a lot like this, except we saw a lot more t-shirts and shorts.

La Rambla, 1905
Wikimedia/Montse liz

The front of Palau Güell.

The interior, as I mentioned, is posh, and a little hard to photograph. Still, I took some details, such as the basement, where carriages and horses were kept.

Stained glass near the main entrance celebrating Catalonia.

The dining room.

A view of the back, including ironwork on the balconies.

There was a lot else besides, but what I really enjoyed were Gaudí’s rooftop chimneys, which is the last place one visits. Some of the more famed chimneys anywhere, I believe.

They come in singles.

Or groups, depending on how you look at them.

The crowning star.

I was also able to create images of Barcelona rooftops from this vantage.

You know, just like Picasso. I must be in my Blue Period.

Parc Güell

Posted on June 19, 2023 by admin

It has happened to me in a lot of places over the years, and I can’t quite account for it. In various parts of the United States, but also in Europe and Australia – anywhere I might blend in with a crowd, including places where I don’t speak the language. What happens: a stranger asks me directions. It happened in Barcelona, too, during our return from Parc Güell (Güell Park), down a fairly steep slope in the Gràcia district.

This street wasn’t our actual path, but branches off from it and gives some idea of the hill you need to climb – partly assisted by an outdoor escalator at one point – to reach the park.

It was a neighborhood of political graffiti as well. A whiff of old Barcelona, I guess. Much of it in English for some reason.

While coming down the slope, Yuriko had gotten somewhat ahead of me, so I was walking alone for a few moments. A woman with some small children in tow asked me directions to the park in Catalan (or Spanish). I was able to point in the direction I’d come and say “park,” which conveniently is the same in all the relevant languages. She seemed happy to hear it, and I was certain I’d given her some correct information.

Parc Güell is a large place, though only a section of it includes architectural elements by Antoni Gaudí. The city has charged admission to that section for the last 10 years or so.

“[Industrialist and Gaudí friend] Eusebi Güell entrusted Gaudí with the project of making an urbanization [sic, neighborhood] for wealthy families on a large estate he had acquired in the area popularly known as Muntanya Pelada,” the park’s web site (machine translated) says. “Its situation was unbeatable, in a healthy environment and with splendid views over the sea and the Plan de Barcelona.

“In October 1900, the land began to be leveled and the works went at a good pace. On January 4, 1903, a description published in the Yearbook of the Association of Architects stated that the two pavilions at the entrance, the main staircase, the shelter or waiting area, the external fence, the viaducts and part of the large esplanade, as well as the water evacuation system [sic, were complete? Under way?]”

In any case, only two houses were ever sold, so as a new neighborhood, the place was a failure. Eventually Güell’s heirs sold the would-be development to the city. The common-area work that Gaudí did remained, to great acclaim in future years.

A path from the entrance leads to a large esplanade, or perhaps best called a terrace, originally planned as a place for outdoor shows.

An undulating bench marks the edge of the esplanade.

It offers a sweeping view of Barcelona, plus other Gaudí structures in the park.

It’s a popular place.

Gaudí collaborator Josep M. Jujol did the bench mosaics.

Stairs lead down from the esplanade, which is supported by 86 columns that form the Hypostyle Hall. It was supposed to have been a sheltered marketplace.

From there, the Dragon Stairs. The figure is actually a salamander, I’ve read.

At the base of the stairs is the Porter’s Lodge, which houses exhibits about the 19th- and 20th-century history of Barcelona. Its interior walls are bright colors.

Other parts of the park include the paths and viaducts that Gaudí designed. We did some wandering.

I was reminded a bit of Brackenridge Park in San Antonio, but the similarities aren’t really that deep.

Lush bursts of flowers adorn parts of the park.

Springtime in Barcelona. There’s a romcom in there somewhere. Probably not a very good one, but how many are?

Sagrada Família

Posted on June 18, 2023 by admin

In a (mostly) low-rise town like Barcelona, high-rises stand out. Even unconventional high-rises. Even one of the world’s most unconventional high-rises, Sagrada Família.

You can see the basilica and its modern construction cranes from the roof of Barcelona Cathedral.

Or from Parc Güell.

From the Montjuïc Cable Car.

Or from the entrance of Recinte Modernista de Sant Pau, looking down the fittingly named thoroughfare Avinguda Gaudí.

In full, the structure is Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família. Lauded around the world these days. Not everyone has had praise for basilica down the years, however.

George Orwell was not, of course, a tourist in Barcelona in 1937, but he did visit the Sagrada Família at one point, which he mentions in Homage to Catalonia.

“For the first time since I had been in Barcelona I went to have a look at the cathedral – a modern cathedral, and one of the most hideous buildings in the world. It has four crenellated spires exactly the shape of hock bottles. Unlike most of the churches in Barcelona, it was not damaged during the revolution – it was spared because of its ‘artistic value’, people said. I think the Anarchists showed bad taste in not blowing it up when they had the chance, though they did hang a red and black banner between its spires.”

Sage about much, but Orwell wasn’t right about everything. Still, before I visited Barcelona, I was a little skeptical myself. Something that receives that much praise inspires a bit of skepticism, or should, and the many pictures I’d seen didn’t quite convey greatness, at least to me. Oddness, yes. Maybe strangeness for the sake of strangeness, as envisioned by Antoni Gaudí and carried on for decades by his successors down to the present day, but not to completion just yet.

So on our first morning in Barcelona, May 18, after a pleasant breakfast in the hotel, and a walk of only a few blocks, we approached Sagrada Família from its western corner. Despite its height, basilica emerged into view only as we rounded the last neighboring block. Then it was time to gawk.

Often enough images don’t do a place justice. That is really the case for Sagrada Família. Whatever skepticism I had evaporated. It has a presence, rising there in front of you. It is still quite a strange church, but a great strangeness — a strange majesty? — expressed in innumerable details.

Naturally, despite realizing that seeing the structure with my own eyes is the best way to experience Sagrada Família, I proceeded to take a lot of pictures. We passed by the structure more than once, so I captured it at different times of day.

As I said, innumerable details.

One side is the Nativity Façade, mostly completed while Gaudí was still alive. He was fatally struck by a streetcar in 1926 at age 73, and is buried in the basilica’s crypt, which was closed when we visited. As you’d expect, that side celebrates the birth of Jesus.

The other side is the the more austere Passion Façade, a more recent completion, though expressing Gaudí’s ideas.

I didn’t know who Japanese sculptor Etsuro Sotoo was. Yuriko did, and she was keen to see the large door to the basilica that he designed, which is in the Nativity Façade. The door’s leaf motif not only includes many leaves in bronze and glass, but also some creatures that live in the underbrush.

That was the door through which we entered the basilica on the afternoon of May 19. These days, you have to book a tour to do so, which I did weeks before we arrived in Barcelona – the only thing I booked ahead of time for the trip besides the visit to the Book of Kells and the Long Room.

In we went.

Too many distinctive features to name, but what struck me most of all were the columns supporting the ceiling, which branched like trees toward the top.

There was no shortage of other tourists admiring the place, but the vast space inside held them all pretty well.

Everyone takes pictures.

I wonder how many tens or hundreds of thousands a day. Or an hour.

Basilica de Santa Maria del Mar

Posted on June 15, 2023 by admin

Scenes from a Barcelona grocery store.

Wasn’t a very big one. One of the many 24/7 jobs in the Eixample district.

I like that brand name, Fiesta Brava. Best to translate, Wild Party? Could be. Of course, the store had much more than sangria and boxed wine. Prices might be comparable, but I’d say the few we visited were a cut above U.S. convenience stores in selection.

I’ve read that sangria is considered a drink for tourists, but I have to wonder. I expect it’s mostly Catalans visiting these grocery stores and availing themselves of those rows of sangria bottles.

This is the entry at enciclopedia.cat about one Berenguer de Montagut, machine (Google) translated from Catalan.

Master of works

He worked preferentially in Manresa, where the New Bridge project is attributed to him (1318?); in 1322 he directed the works of the Carmelite convent and from 1328 he was master major of the seat. In Barcelona he contracted, with R. Despuig, the project of the church of Santa Maria del Mar (1329). Later, with Pere Baró, he began the construction of the sanctuary of Santa Maria de Lledó.

I find it astonishing that even the name of the man who – designed – oversaw construction – both, probably – of such an edifice as the basilica Santa Maria del Mar – is known at all. But apparently it is. Still, he didn’t do it alone.

“The neighbourhood’s inhabitants poured all their efforts into building… Santa Maria del Mar, successfully completing it in only 55 years,” says a surprisingly well-written item on the basilica, published in English by a Barceló Hotel Group, of all entities, which also notes that Santa Maria del Mar has been featured in recent novels, and a Netflix series.

“Although this monumental work was overseen by Berenguer de Montagut and Ramon Despuig, the real credit must go to the residents of La Ribera [the surrounding neighborhood] and, in particular, the bastaixos — in other words, those who carried on their own backs the stone from which the basilica was built. The stone had been brought from the royal quarry, located on the Hill of Montjuïc and transported by boat to the vicinity of the church.”

That’s the entrance, but for tourists (as opposed to parishioners), it was the exit. We entered from behind the sanctuary.

But soon enough, the vault appears overhead.

Looking back into the nave.

The chapels aren’t closed off.

The basilica has stood since the 14th century. It abides. Considering the vicissitudes of Barcelonan history, quite a feat. Another line from EB (1929) on Barcelona, on the political violence of the modern period: “ [E]specially serious were the uprisings of 1835, when 11 convents were destroyed, and of the “tragic week” in 1909, when over 60 churches and religious buildings disappeared from the city’s architectural heritage.”

And of course, 1929 Barcelona was completely unaware of other things to come, and soon.

Translated from the basilica’s web site: “One of the most important defeats [sic, incidents] took place at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, when the basilica burned down [sic, was seriously damaged] after a group of anarchists caused a fire there. Part of the baroque altar, some of the stained glass, numerous elements of furniture and an important part of the archives disappeared under the flames.”

Also worth mentioning: the 14th century was one of the prosperous periods in the city’s history, as a port doing well on trade from around the Mediterranean. Just the sort of place to set your historical fiction.

A look at the floor.

If I went to a modern headstone maker and asked for this design, would he or she do it? I wonder, but I’m also certain I’d never actually do that.

El Born & Parc de la Ciutadella

Posted on June 14, 2023 by admin

The first lines of the search results for the El Born district of Barcelona, sampled this morning:

El Born is sandwiched between Via Laietana and Barceloneta and is served by the metro stops Barceloneta and Jaume 1 which are on the same line. Las Ramblas and…

El Born brings to Greenpoint and NYC a taste of tapas y platillos from Spain and has a focus in Barcelona, where the owners are from.

A local’s guide to El Born district of Barcelona. The 26 best hotels, museums, bars, restaurants, shops and guided tours of El Borne for 2023.

Located in between the Gothic Quarter and the Ciutadella Park, El Born is one of Barcelona’s trendiest and most popular neighborhoods.

Once home to Barcelona’s affluent merchants, noblemen, and artisans, El Born is now one of the hippest, liveliest, and most creative…

That last line is from a site called “travel away” (no caps), which looks like an Afar knockoff, and the headline is “A Curated Guide to El Born, Barcelona.” Of course it’s curated. You must visit that perfect tapas place that serves unique craft sangria, or you’ll come down with a bad case of FOMO. (We had tasty tapas and swell sangria during our Catalonia holiday, but not in El Born.)

Anyway, you can’t just wander around to see what you can see, can you?

Of course you can. I wasn’t hip enough to know that El Born is trendy, but we were intrigued by our surroundings as we ambled along the mostly pedestrian thoroughfare Passeig del Born, where we acquired a drink and snacks to eat on a bench.

The soda in question. All the way from Hamburg. We’d never heard of it, so we gave it a go. Now I can’t remember what it tasted like, so it must have been neither that good or particularly bad.

At one end of the passeig is a large plaza featuring an imposing cast-iron structure.

That’s El Born Centre de Cultura i Memoria. The main part of the inside was free to walk into; just follow the rules.

The El Born Centre was once a large public market (Mercat del Born), and the first cast-iron structure of its kind in Barcelona, dating from 1876.

I was inspired to take a few black-and-whites.

I should have take more of those in Barcelona, which has a lot of good contour for monochrome. Ah, well. The iron framework over our heads wasn’t the only thing to see at El Born Centre. Beneath the ground-floor walkways is an archaeological site with a connection to Barcelona’s bloody past.

A neighborhood once existed here, as it becomes clear staring down on the ragged wall stubs and stones. In 1714, after the Principality of Catalonia capitulated to Bourbon forces toward the end of the War of Spanish Succession, the victors leveled the neighborhood to build the Ciutadella (citadel) and its security esplanade, presumably to help keep the Catalans in line. Well over a century later, after the hubbub in ’68 (1868, that is) the city assumed control of the site and eventually built the market on a relatively small part of it.

Much later, the ruins were uncovered, and archaeological investigations proceed. Sources tell me the ruins of 60 houses in 11 separate blocks can be found in El Born’s archaeological site.

We exited from the opposite end of El Born Centre that we entered, and from there a short street leads to the sizable Parc de la Ciutadella (Citadel Park), which is the use 19th-century Barcelona had for most the former military facility. Good choice. It’s a grand place for a stroll. Or just to hang out.

A water feature. Reminded me a little of Chapultepec Park in Mexico City.

Plus an assortment of monumental structures. Such as the Catalonian parliament building.

A thing called Castell dels tres Dragones, which seemed to be closed for repairs. Later (as in, today) I learned that Lluís Domènech i Montaner designed it. We’ll come back to him. He did something much more amazing that we saw later.

A Catalan gazebo. Note the difference in detail from Castilian gazebos. Catalans are reportedly fiercely proud of their gazebo heritage.

We were too tired to climb these stairs, but we did admire the work from some distance.

That’s the Ciudadela Park Cascade, which as far as I can tell doesn’t honor anything specific, but was built in the late 19th century to celebrate Barcelona’s revival. And in time for the Universal Exhibition of Barcelona in 1888, which is yet another place to visit once that time machine is up and running (and 1929, too).

The park, like Jackson Park in Chicago and Hemisfair is San Antonio, owes much of its modern shape to a long-ago world’s fair.

Barri Gòtic Ramble: Carrers (Streets)

Posted on June 13, 2023 by admin

The Fourteenth Edition of Encyclopædia Britannica (1929) includes the following information (p. 103) in its Barcelona entry, about what is now known as the Barri Gòtic, the Gothic Quarter, which EB refers to simply as Ciudad.

“The Ciudad is the old Barcelona, built around the Roman Barcino… In the interior of the Ciudad are the architectural treasures left to Barcelona – the Plaza del Rey; the Gothic cathedral…; the church of Santa Maria del Mar and many public buildings…

“The narrow, irregular streets of the old quarter were broken through in the 19th century by the Calle de Fernando VII and its continuations, and more recently by the Via Layetana and other avenues; it seems probable that the mediæval ground-plan, so long conserved, will soon be unrecognizable.”

I’m glad to report that urban renewal didn’t completely erase the old quarter over the last century.

Could be that the Depression and then the civil war put a halt to further big changes in the urban landscape, and by the 1950s, the quarter was run down and less desirable, and the city was expanding outward anyway. Then the neighborhood got spiffed up, though retaining its irregularities, in time for the 1992 Olympics.

Via Layetana is still called that, but Calle de Fernando VII is known as Carrer de Ferran in our time, since no doubt naming things for Spanish kings is a no-go in modern Catalonia.

These days, affluent Catalans roam the narrow streets of Ciudad, supporting an array of small shops, boutiques, restaurants, bars, and other businesses. The many tourists support those businesses, too, but also the likes of the Museu Picasso (as we did), Museu Moco, Museu Frederic Marès, Museu d’Historia de Barcelona, and the Museu de la Xocolata.

Most of the time, we walked around just to see what we could see. This kind of pre-car streetscape is pretty thin on the ground in North America (with a few exceptions), so it was a good ramble in the mediæval ground-plan.

Fun things in the shop windows.

A fair amount of graffiti, or rather street paintings.

I don’t think I’d ever seen a beggar in the pose that you see in illustrations. He didn’t move a bit.

I gave him a euro for his trouble.

Barri Gòtic Ramble: Plaçes (Plazas)

Posted on June 12, 2023 by admin

One of the few places I saw the flag of the Kingdom of Spain in Spain last month: the Palau de la Generalitat, seat of the Catalan government.

I suppose one of the details of the deal establishing Catalonian autonomy has the flag of Spain at this particular center spot, an acknowledgment, however small, that Catalonia is still part of Spain. We spotted the flags not long after leaving Barcelona Cathedral. Our unspoken goal: wander around the Barri Gòtic, to and through its plazas.

The Palau de la Generalitat, which had a long construction period from the 15th to the 17th centuries, fronts Plaça Sant Jaume; across the way directly is Barcelona City Hall.

One of the residential buildings facing the plaça displays its conviction that Catalonia should be independent, in the form of an Catalonian independence flag, the Estelada. We saw a scattering of the flags around the city.

The lively Plaça de Santa Maria, the open space in front of Basilica de Santa Maria del Mar. As we wandered by, a troupe of dancers danced, so we stayed a while.

Plaça del Rei.

An important (main?) branch of the Barcelona City History Museum (MUHBA) has an entrance on the plaza. I’ve read that Roman ruins are in its lower level, but no go. The lower level was closed for unspecified reasons. Instead we spent time on the first (ground) floor, where you can see La Capilla de Santa Maria del Palacio Real Mayor, a royal chapel ordered built by James II of Aragon (Jaume).

Plus an assortment of smaller artifacts from Old Barcelona.

I saw this Barri Gòtic plaza on the map, and I knew I had to see it.

An unpretentious square, with little to indicate who it is named for.

I was beginning to think there was nothing to honor the man, but I was wrong.

No statue or the like, which I suspect the honoree would have found faintly ridiculous. Well done, Barcelona.

Barcelona Cathedral

Posted on June 11, 2023 by admin

We were up and out early on our last day in Dublin, which was capped by downing Guinnesses, and we flew out that evening for a somewhat late arrival around midnight at El Prat Airport, Barcelona. Our energy reserves were low, riding one of the yellow-and-black cabs – the only legal colors – along the highway, looking out to indistinct nighttime streetscapes.

Some blocks from our hotel, we left the highway and crossed into the district known as Eixample, literally Expansion. That’s what it was, for late 19th-century Barcelona. The neighborhood features a regular street grid with buildings on all four sides of every block, a mix of residential and retail, with some offices as well.

We perked right up. At taxi speed, and at the midnight hour, details are fuzzy. The big signs and the bright lights and scattering of pedestrians on the sidewalks stood out. We passed a small grocery, brightly lit. A cafe. A small restaurant. A number of closed businesses, either for the night or for good. Another small grocery, just as bright. A closed bakery. A closed boutique with small lights illuminating mannikins. A bar with a few patrons out on tables on the sidewalk. A restaurant with a takeout business. Another grocery store.

What do you know, Catalonians were working on that whole walkability thing all the way back in the 19th century, especially one Ildefons Cerdà, the pioneering urban planner who designed neighborhood.

The next morning, May 18, we were fairly eager to take to the streets of Eixample, and wider Barcelona, and walk, and figure out the subways. By mid-morning found ourselves in the Barri Gòtic, the city’s oldest neighborhood. Put another way, the original location of the city, with many streets owing their origins to Roman thoroughfares, and many buildings owing their origins to a 14th- and 15th-century flowering of prosperity in the up-and-down history of Barcelona.

You can’t wander through the Barri Gòtic without encountering Barcelona Cathedral from one direction or another. We approached from the back.

Formally, the Cathedral of the Holy Cross and Saint Eulalia. A Christian site since the 4th century at least, and site of a Roman temple before that. Completed in 1420 after more than a century under construction.

Niches.

Details.

In the crypt beneath the high altar is alabaster sarcophagus of St. Eulalia, patroness of the cathedral and co-patroness of Barcelona. Martyred in the early 4th century, according to tradition.

Maintenance never ends.

The cathedral naturally counts as Gothic, but Gothic Revival as well. The Gothic-style exterior was a 19th- and early 20th-century addition, replacing a spare exterior that was the style for Catalan churches when the cathedral was originally built.

Part of the admission (€9) included a ride in a small elevator to a landing and a small metal staircase leading to a short series of walkways on the roof of the cathedral.

Thus included in the admission are expansive views of Barcelona.

Ordinary visitors don’t exit by at the place they came in, but rather through a door that leads to a cloister ringed with chapels that are behind iron bars, as they are in the cathedral itself.

The chapel next to the gift shop. They were on their way to visit St. Rita, patroness of abused and battered women.

I don’t remember which chapel this plaque fronted. It was the only memorial I saw in Barcelona to civil war dead, though I didn’t go out of my way looking for them. In this case clerics.

Not the only momento mori around. Burials in the floor.

A reminder of mortality before you step out of the cathedral grounds into the city streets. In case you needed one.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling