The Carrer del Bisbe Bridge

Look up. A bridge of lacy stonework, with pointed arches and pinnacles, hangs over Carrer del Bisbe, linking the Palau de la Generalitat with the Casa dels Canonges, the old canons' residence. It looks straight out of the 15th century. And yet it was finished in 1928.

1Twentieth-century Gothic

It was designed by the architect Joan Rubió i Bellver, a disciple of Gaudí, as part of the works meant to give the area around the cathedral a medieval air ahead of the 1929 International Exhibition. This is what's called neo-Gothic: a recreation, not an ancient survivor. Much of what we now call the Gothic Quarter was restored, completed or reinvented in those decades.

2The skull and the dagger

Search the underside of the bridge for a small skull run through by a dagger. Several stories have grown up around it. The best known says that if anyone ever pulls out the dagger, a curse will fall upon the city. Another claims the architect put it there as revenge because the City Council had turned down another of his projects. Neither has any documentary support: they are tales that have attached themselves to the bridge over the years.

The bridge is a work of 1928; the curse of the skull belongs to modern oral tradition.

Some people even swear that if you walk underneath it backwards and make a wish, it will come true. Nobody has proved it, of course, but it's hard to resist giving it a go.

3What to look for

• The skull and dagger on the underside of the bridge. You'll need sharp eyes.
• The Gothic tracery of the parapet, crisp and clearly modern.
• The Casa dels Canonges, on one side, now the official residence of the President of the Generalitat.