Church sights in Barcelona
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La Sagrada Família
If you have time for only one sightseeing outing, this should be it. La Sagrada Família inspires awe by its sheer verticality, and in the manner of the medieval cathedrals it emulates, it’s still under construction after more than 100 years. When completed, the highest tower will be more than half as high again as those that stand today.
Unfinished it may be, but it attracts around 2.8 million visitors a year and is the most visited monument in Spain. The most important recent tourist was Pope Benedict XVI, who consecrated the church in a huge ceremony in November 2010.
The Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família (Expiatory Temple of the Holy Family) was Antoni Gaudí’s…
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Església de Sants Just i Pastor
This somewhat neglected, single-nave church, with chapels on either side of the buttressing, was built in 1342 in Catalan Gothic style on what is reputedly the site of the oldest parish church in Barcelona. Inside, you can admire some fine stained-glass windows. In front of it, in a pretty little square that was used as a set (a smelly Parisian marketplace) in 2006 for Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, is what is claimed to be the city’s oldest Gothic fountain.
On the morning of 11 September 1924, Antoni Gaudí was arrested as he attempted to enter the church from this square to attend Mass. In those days of the dictatorship of General Primo de Rivera, it took little to…
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Església de Sant Pere de les Puelles
Not a great deal remains of the original church or convent that stood here since early medieval times. The church’s pre-Romanesque Greek-cross floor plan survives, as do some Corinthian columns beneath the 12th-century dome and a much-damaged Renaissance vault leading into a side chapel.
It was around this church that settlement began in La Ribera. In 985, a Muslim raiding force under Al-Mansur attacked Barcelona and largely destroyed the convent, killing or capturing the nuns.
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Església de la Puríssima Concepció I Assumpció de Nostra Senyora
One hardly expects to run into a medieval church on the grid-pattern streets of the late-19th-century city extension, yet that is just what this is. Transferred stone by stone from the old centre in 1871–88, this 14th-century church has a pretty 16th-century cloister with a peaceful garden.
Behind is a Romanesque-Gothic bell tower (11th to 16th century), moved from another old town church that didn’t survive, Església de Sant Miquel. This is one of a handful of such old churches shifted willy-nilly from their original locations to L’Eixample.
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Església de la Mercè
Raised in the 1760s on the site of its Gothic predecessor, the baroque Església de la Mercè is home to Barcelona’s most celebrated patron saint. It was badly damaged during the civil war. What remains is, however, quite a curiosity. The baroque facade facing the square contrasts with the Renaissance flank along Carrer Ample. The latter was actually moved here from another nearby church that was subsequently destroyed in the 1870s.
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Colònia Güell
Apart from La Sagrada Família, Gaudí’s last big project was the creation of a utopian textile workers’ complex for his magnate patron Eusebi Güell outside Barcelona at Santa Coloma de Cervelló. Gaudí’s main role was to erect the colony’s church, Colònia Güell. Work began in 1908 but the idea fizzled eight years later and Gaudí only finished the crypt, which still serves as a working church.
This structure is a key to understanding what the master had in mind for his magnum opus, La Sagrada Família. The mostly brick-clad columns that support the ribbed vaults in the ceiling are inclined at all angles in much the way you might expect trees in a forest to…
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Església de les Saleses
A singular neo-Gothic effort, this church is interesting because it was designed by Joan Martorell i Montells (1833–1906), Gaudí’s architecture professor. Raised in 1878–85 with an adjacent convent (badly damaged in the civil war and now a school), it offers hints of what was to come with Modernisme, with his use of brick, mosaics and sober stained glass.
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Temple del Sagrat Cor
The Church of the Sacred Heart, looming above the top funicular station, is meant to be Barcelona’s answer to Paris’ Sacré-Cœur. The church, built from 1902 to 1961 in a mix of styles with some Modernista influence, is certainly as visible as its Parisian namesake, and even more vilified by aesthetes. It’s actually two churches, one on top of the other. The top one is surmounted by a giant statue of Christ and has a lift to take you to the roof for the panoramic (and often wind-chilled) views.
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Església de Santa Maria del Mar
At the southwest end of Passeig del Born stands the apse of Barcelona’s finest Catalan Gothic church, Santa Maria del Mar (Our Lady of the Sea). Built in the 14th century with record-breaking alacrity for the time (it took just 54 years), the church is remarkable for its architectural harmony and simplicity.
Its construction started in 1329, with Berenguer de Montagut and Ramon Despuig being the architects in charge. During the construction, the city’s porters (bastaixos) spent a day each week carrying on their backs the stone required to build the church from royal quarries in Montjuïc. Their memory lives on in reliefs of them in the main doors and stone carvings…
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Església de Sant Miquel del Port
Finished in 1755, this sober baroque church was the first building completed in La Barceloneta. Built low so that the cannon in the then Ciutadella fort could fire over it if necessary, it bears images of St Michael (Miquel) and two other saints considered protectors of the Catalan fishing fleet: Sant Elm and Santa Maria de Cervelló.
Just behind the church is the bustling marketplace, worth an early-morning browse. Ferdinand Lesseps, the French engineer who designed the Suez Canal, did a stint as France’s consul-general in Barcelona and lived in the house to the right of the church.
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Església de Betlem
Just north of Carrer del Carme, this church was constructed in baroque style for the Jesuits in the late 17th and early 18th centuries to replace an earlier church destroyed by fire in 1671. Fire was a bit of a theme for this site: the church was once considered the most splendid of Barcelona’s few baroque offerings, but leftist arsonists torched it in 1936.
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Església de Santa Maria del Pi
Looming over the Plaça de Sant Josep Oriol is the flank of the Església de Santa Maria del Pi, a Gothic church built in the 14th to 16th centuries. The bulk of it was completed in 1320–91. With its 10m diameter, the beautiful rose window above its entrance on Plaça del Pi is claimed by some to be the world’s biggest. The interior of the church was gutted when leftists ransacked it in the opening months of the civil war in 1936 and most of the stained glass is modern. Perhaps one happy result of the fire was the destruction of the 19th-century, neo-Gothic seating, which therefore had to be replaced by the 18th-century baroque original. Admission is free.
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Capella Macba
The renovated 400-year-old Convent dels Àngels houses the Capella Macba, where the Macba regularly rotates selections from its permanent collection. The Gothic framework of the one-time convent-church remains intact.
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Església de Sant Pau
The best example of Romanesque architecture in the city is the dainty little cloister of this church. Set in a somewhat dusty garden, the 12th-century church also boasts some Visigothic sculptural detail on the main entrance.
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