Santa Maria del Mar and Fossar de les Moreres

Chapter 9/11 · Barcelona

Audio coming soon: meanwhile, the text is read aloud with your device voice.

Santa Maria del Mar is one of the high points of Catalan Gothic and was built in little more than half a century, between 1329 and 1383. This is recorded on the stone tablets of the Portal de les Moreres and in the contract with the master builders Berenguer de Montagut and Ramon Despuig. Unlike the cathedral, linked to the monarchy and the nobility, it was paid for by the people of the Ribera and the port, with money or with their labour.

The port porters, the “bastaixos”, carried on their backs, one by one, the stones brought from the royal quarry on Montjuïc. The main door pays tribute to them. In 1708 Archduke Charles of Austria and Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick were married here. In August 1936 the church was set on fire and lost almost all its images and the Baroque altar.

Beside the basilica is the Fossar de les Moreres, the old parish cemetery. Many of the city's defenders who died on 11 September 1714, in the War of the Spanish Succession, were buried here. The memorial by the architect Carme Fiol was inaugurated on 11 September 1989, and in 2001 the red torch with its flame was added.

We walk round the basilica along Carrer de Santa Maria, past the Fossar, come out onto the Passeig del Born and go up Carrer de Montcada, the street of Gothic palaces and the Picasso Museum. Then we continue north along the Sant Pere streets to the Palau de la Música.

← Plaça del Rei (King's Square) · Palau de la Música Catalana (Palace of Catalan Music) →