Mercat de Sant Antoni, Barcelona

Mercat de Sant Antoni is a market built across an entire city block, and its iron structure gives the building an unusually open presence. Antoni Rovira i Trias designed it, and construction finished in 1882. The market was inaugurated on the twenty-fourth of September that year, during Barcelona’s city festival, and opened to the public the following day.

Its design brings together four long wings in a Greek-cross plan, with a lantern-topped cupola above them. Look at the façades: cast-iron columns carry rounded arches, while glazed ceramic tiles create a patterned surface in cream and garnet. The cupola repeats the ironwork and carries a zigzag roof of green and yellow ceramic, finished with a crest-like crown.

Inside, the roof is held by a network of iron beams and a total of 112 cast-iron columns, creating a broad interior with few interruptions. The market occupies 12,100 m², with 5,214 m² devoted to commerce, and it is Barcelona’s largest market. Its Sunday market continues a book-trading tradition that became established here in 1936; during the Franco dictatorship, it was also a place where censored books were bought and sold. The building reopened after a complete renovation on the twenty-third of May 2018.