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Barri Gòtic

plaça del rei

This is where it all started, the site of Barcelona's Cathedral and its seats of government. For all that, it's a rather calm, low-key neighbourhood, more like the centre of Paris than the businesslike centre of London. Much of it is predominantly residential; tourists and locals get along nicely on narrow streets that can be 2,000 years old.

In any city founded by the Romans, you can look at a map and pick out the telltale shape of the Roman castrum, identical from Britain to the Euphrates: a rectangle bisected two ways by the main streets, the cardo and decumanus, with a forum near their intersection. In Roman Barcino, the rectangle became slightly rounded, in the loop between the curving C/ Banys Nous, C/ d’Avinyó and Vía Laietana.The gentle hill of Mons Tàber was Barcino’s 'capitol', and here the institutions of medieval Barcelona took root over the ruins of their Roman predecessors.

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Ajuntament

Barcelona's city hall

Around the Cathedral

Roman ruins, a Picasso, and a shoe museum

Carrer de Banys Nous

The street of antiques

Cathedral: La Seu

Please don’t feed the geese!

Domus Sant Honorat & Avinyó

Roman houses

Domus of Sant Honorat

An Ancient Roman House Under the Street

El Call: Jewish Barcelona

Life in Barcelona's ghetto

Els Quatre Gats

The home of modernisme

Gaudí Exhibition Centre

All about Gaudí

Generalitat

Seat of the Catalan government for 600 years

Harlem Jazz Club

Get mellow

La Manual Alpargatera

The King of Espadrilles

LockerBarcelona

Leave your bags

Lost and Found

Where you might find your stuff

Museu d'Historia de Barcelona (MUHBA)

A slice of Roman Barcelona and a Royal Palace

Museu Diocesà

masterpieces from the diocese of Barcelona

Museu Frederic Marès

A Mad 'Sentimental Collection' of Art and Bric-a-brac

Plaça de l'Àngel

What happens to people who steal holy toe bones

Plaça de la Vila de Madrid

Roman Tombs in the City Centre

Plaça del Rei

The king's square

Plaça Sant Felip Neri

The Barri Gòtic's secret romantic square

Santa Anna

A Secret Garden

Santa Maria del Pi

Our Lady of the Pine tree

Sants Just i Pastor

Barcelona's oldest church

Shadow of the Wind Walk

Follow in the footsteps of Sempere and Carax

Sinagoga Major Shlomo Ben Adret

A forgotten synagogue rediscovered in the Jewish ghetto

Temple of Augustus

Hidden in a Gothic palace

Via Laietana

Catalonia's Wall Street

Text © Dana Facaros & Michael Pauls

Image by Laura Padgett