Barcelona Cathedral

In front of you stands the Cathedral of the Holy Cross and Saint Eulalia, Barcelona's seu. The thing that grabs your attention first, that façade bristling with pinnacles, is in fact the newest part of the building.

1Six centuries of building work

Beneath your feet there was first an early Christian basilica and later a Romanesque cathedral. The present Gothic church was begun on 1 May 1298, in the reign of James II, and work went on for some 150 years: apse, naves, cloister. But the main façade was left unfinished. A design from the early 15th century, attributed to a master named Carlí, did exist; it simply gathered dust for centuries.

2The man who paid for the façade

In the late 19th century, with the 1888 Universal Exhibition on the horizon, the banker Manuel Girona offered to foot the bill. Between 1887 and 1890 the architect Josep Oriol Mestres raised the neo-Gothic façade, following that medieval design fairly closely. Not everyone was impressed, and in 1897 and 1898 August Font enriched it with more tracery and the two side towers. The central dome tower, about 70 metres high, was only finished in 1913.

The part of the cathedral that looks oldest actually dates from the age of Modernisme.

Saint Eulalia, the city's co-patron, rests in the crypt beneath the high altar. Thirteen white geese live in the cloister; the most common explanation is that they stand for her thirteen years, though this is a tradition with no document behind it.

3What to look for

• The neo-Gothic façade: compare its cleaner, more even stone with the medieval side walls.
• The dome tower, completed in 1913, which crowns the whole building.
• The gargoyles along the sides: animals, fantastic creatures and even a unicorn.