The Rough Guide to Barcelona 8 (Rough Guide Travel Guides)

Plaça de la Seu and Plaça Nova

The cathedral square,

Plaça de la Seu

, is a regular weekly venue for the

dancing of the

sardana

, the Catalan national dance (every Sat at 6pm, Easter to

Nov). Anyone can join in, though you’d best read the feature on p.223 first.

Meanwhile, in front of the cathedral, the wide, pedestrianized Avinguda de la

Catedral hosts an

antiques market

every Thursday, and a

Christmas craft

fair

every December.

Stand back to look at the cathedral buildings and it’s easy to see the line of

fortified Roman towers that stood originally on this spot, before being incor-

porated into the later medieval buildings. One such tower formed part of the

cathedral almshouse (La Pia Almoina), now the

Museu Diocesà

(Tues–Sat

10am–2pm & 5–8pm, Sun & holidays 11am–2pm; €6;

933 152 213), with

exhibition space spread across four floors, and with views over the cathedral

square from the top. The impressive permanent collection is of religious art,

artefacts and church treasures from around Barcelona, notably a series of

frescoes of the Apocalypse (1122 AD) from Sant Salvador in Polinyà and a series

of graphic retables, including one of St Bartholomew being skinned alive.

On the other flank of the cathedral are two more late-medieval buildings

closely associated with it. The

Casa de l’Ardiaca

(once the archdeacon’s

residence, now the city archives) encloses a tiny cloistered and tiled courtyard

with a small

fountain.To

the right of the badly worn Renaissance gateway on

c/de Santa Llúcia look for the curious carved swallow-and-tortoise postbox.

The

Palau Episcopal

, just beyond at the western end of c/de Santa Llúcia, was

the bishop’s palace and built on a grander scale altogether.Though you’re not

allowed inside, you can go as far as the courtyard to see the fine outdoor

stairway; there’s a patio at the top with Romanesque wall paintings.

The large

Plaça Nova

, facing the cathedral, marks one of the medieval

entrances to the old town – north of it, you’re fast entering the wider streets

and more regular contours of the modern city. Even if you’re sticking with the

Barri Gòtic for now, walk over to study the frieze surmounting the modern

College of Architects, the

Collegi d’Arquitectes

, on the other side of the

square. Designed in 1960 from sketches supplied by Picasso, it has a crude,

almost graffiti-like quality, at odds with the more stately buildings to the side.

BARRI GÒTIC

Plaça de la Seu and Plaça Nova

Boho Barcelona and the Four Cats

There’s not much to see in the shopping zone north of the cathedral, but a century or

so ago a tavern called

Els Quatre Gats

(The Four Cats, c/Montsió 3,

www.4gats

.com) burned brightly and briefly as the epicentre of Barcelona’s bohemian in-crowd.

It was opened by Pere Romeu and other

modernista

artists in 1897 as a gathering

place for their contemporaries, and the building itself is gloriously decorated inside

and out in exuberant Catalan Art Nouveau style – it was the classy architect Josep

Puig i Cadafalch’s first commission.

Els Quatre Gats

soon thrived as the birthplace

modernista

magazines, the scene of poetry readings and shadow-puppet theatre

and the venue for cultural debate. A young Picasso designed the menu and, in 1901,

the café was the setting for his first public exhibition.

Els Quatre Gats

has always

traded on its reputation – a place where “accountants, dreamers and would-be

geniuses shared tables with the spectres of Pablo Picasso, Isaac Albéniz, Federico

García Lorca and Salvador Dalí” (

The Shadow of the Wind

, Carlos Ruiz Zafón). Today,

a modern restoration displays something of its former glory, with the bar-restaurant

(see p.208) overseen by a copy of Ramon Casas’ famous wall-painting of himself and

Pere Romeu on a tandem bicycle (the original is in MNAC).