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whose ranks of grilled chickens make a good photograph.
Carrer dels
Escudellers
itself was once a thriving red-light street, and still has a late-night
seediness about it, but it teeters on the edge of respectability. Bars and restau-
rants around here attract a youthful clientele, nowhere more so than those
flanking
Plaça George Orwell
, at the eastern end of c/dels Escudellers.The
wedge-shaped square was created by levelling an old-town block – a favoured
tactic in Barcelona to let in a bit of light – and it has quickly become a hangout
for the grunge crowd.
Carrer d’Avinyo and La Mercè
Carrer d’Avinyo
, running south from c/de Ferran towards the harbour, cuts
through the most atmospheric part of the southern Barri Gòtic. It used to be a
red-light district of some renown, littered with brothels and bars, and frequented
by the young Picasso, whose family moved into the area in 1895. It still looks
the part – a narrow thoroughfare lined with dark overhanging buildings – but
the funky cafés, streetwear shops and boutiques tell the story of its recent
gentrification.The locals aren’t overly enamoured of the influx of bar-crawling
fun-seekers – banners and notices along the length of this and neighbouring
streets plead with visitors to keep the noise down.
Carrer d’Avinyo ends at the junction with
Carrer Ample
, the latter an aristo-
cratic address in the eighteenth century. Here, in the neighbourhood known as
La Mercè
– just a block from the harbour – lived nobles and merchants
enriched by Barcelona’s maritime trade. Most fashionable families took the
opportunity to move north to the Eixample later in the nineteenth century, and
the streets of La Mercè took on an earthier hue. Since then, Carrer de la Mercè
and the surrounding streets (particularly Ample, d’en Gignas and Regomir) have
been home to a series of characteristic old-style
taverns
known as
tascas
or
bodegas
– a glass of wine from the barrel in
Bodega la Plata
, or a similar joint, is
one of the old town’s more authentic experiences.
At Plaça de la Mercè, the eighteenth-century
Església de la Mercè
is the
focus of the city’s biggest annual celebration, the Festes de la Mercè every
September, dedicated to the co-patroness of Barcelona, whose image is paraded
from here. The church was burned in 1936 but the gilt side-chapels, stained-
glass medallions and apse murals have been authentically restored. The square
outside was remodelled in the twentieth century around its statue of Neptune,
though the more pleasing local square is the older
Plaça Duc de Medinaceli
,
a block to the west, with its palms and commemorative cast-iron column
saluting a Catalan admiral.
BARRI GÒTIC
|
Carrer d’Avinyo and La Mercè