Casa de l'Ardiaca, Barcelona

Casa de l'Ardiaca is the historic building beside the cathedral, and it now houses Barcelona’s city historical archive. Its late Gothic character grew from an older foundation: senior cathedral archdeacons lived here from the 12th century, when the house stood over Roman wall towers linked by a bridge. Between 1479 and about 1514, Lluís Desplà reshaped it into a small palace, adding Renaissance touches and gathering ancient objects, including a Roman sarcophagus.

The bridge disappeared in 1823, and the building was joined to the neighbouring dean’s house after its sale in 1870. That work created the arcaded courtyard, whose fountain uses the rails of an earlier well; a palm planted in 1873 still grows there. Beside the entrance, examine the marble letterbox by Lluís Domènech i Montaner.

Its five swallows, tortoise and ivy turn legal administration into a compact visual joke: flight suggests the speed justice should have, the tortoise its slowness, and ivy the bureaucracy that delays it. Local tradition says touching the tortoise brings good luck.