Catedral de la Santa Creu i Santa Eulàlia, Barcelona

Barcelona Cathedral is the great Gothic church before you, dedicated to the Holy Cross and Saint Eulalia. Its present building took shape from 1298 through the fifteenth century, replacing earlier Christian and Romanesque churches on this site. The façade and the spire rising above the crossing are later work, created in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in a neo-Gothic manner.

Look at the carved figures and animals across the façade: they belong to that modern completion, not to the medieval construction. The cathedral’s unusual dedication to the Holy Cross reaches back to the seventh century, while devotion to Eulalia is documented from 877. Her remains rest in the crypt.

Tradition describes Eulalia as a young martyr, and the cathedral preserves her memory as Barcelona’s co-patron saint. The cloister contains the Well of the Geese, where thirteen geese are kept; their number recalls the age assigned to Eulalia at her martyrdom. The building’s long construction involved many masters, including Jaume Fabre, Arnau Bargués, Bernat Roca, Bartomeu Gual, Andreu Escuder, Jaume Solà, Josep Oriol Mestres, and August Font. What you see is therefore a medieval cathedral with a remarkably recent outer face, enclosing a much older sacred story.