Basilica of Our Lady of the Sea

Few Gothic interiors feel as open as Santa Maria del Mar. Inside the basilica in Barcelona's La Ribera quarter, a single airy space is held up by slender octagonal pillars set about 13 metres apart, the widest column spacing of any Gothic church in Europe, and the eye travels without obstruction from the entrance to the apse. It is regarded as the purest example of Catalan Gothic, a style that favoured breadth, plain wall surfaces and a sense of unity over the soaring complexity of northern cathedrals.

The foundation stone was laid on 25 March 1329 and the church was consecrated in 1384, a remarkably short building campaign for the period that explains its consistency. The design is credited to Berenguer de Montagut and Ramon Despuig, and the project was driven by the canon Bernat Llull. The plan is a basilica of three aisles with no transept; the proportions are built around the medieval foot, with the overall width set at a hundred of them. Outside, the west front is framed by two octagonal towers, one completed in 1496 and its companion only in 1902, with statues of Saints Peter and Paul flanking the portal beneath a large rose window. The original rose fell in an earthquake in 1428 and was replaced in the Flamboyant style by 1459.

Santa Maria del Mar was the church of La Ribera, the seafaring district of medieval Barcelona, built when Catalonia was at the height of its maritime power. It was paid for and built largely by the people of the quarter rather than by the nobility, and tradition remembers the bastaixos, the port porters, who carried the stone on their backs from the quarries of Montjuïc. In 1936, at the start of the Spanish Civil War, the church burned for eleven days; its Baroque altarpieces and images were lost, which is why the interior today shows its bare medieval structure. Beside it lies the Fossar de les Moreres, a memorial square on the site of an old cemetery. The church's story inspired Ildefonso Falcones's novel Cathedral of the Sea.

La Ribera, part of Barcelona's old town, is a maze of narrow medieval lanes between the Gothic Quarter and the Ciutadella park, once home to the city's merchants and craftsmen.

Getting there

The basilica is in the Ribera district of central Barcelona. Josep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport (BCN) is about 13 km to the south-west. The nearest Metro station is Jaume I on line L4, a few minutes' walk away.