Santa Maria del Mar

It was built in just 54 years, between 1329 and 1383, which is remarkable for a church of its size, and that is why it is the finest example of pure Catalan Gothic. The residents of the seafaring Ribera district paid for it and built it; the bastaixos, the port's porters, carried the stones on their backs from Montjuïc.

A fire in 1936 destroyed its Baroque decoration and left the interior bare: three very tall naves on widely spaced octagonal columns that give a sense of space and light. It is the setting of the novel «Cathedral of the Sea».