More on the Barri Gotic

Two weeks ago, Karen had a cold, now it's my turn. She took all the cold meds we had with us, so I get to be unmedicated, reducing my propensity to be energetic while out (and to stay up really late writing blog posts with 100 photos in them). So yesterday we did a small walking tour around the high density Barri Gotic (in honour of World Goth Day, but I digress), and today, I'm recovering (and posting).

The Barri had the oldest surviving stuff from the old walled city built by the Romans, including this 12th century church that remains, surrounded by post-1900's buildings...

Jammed in an alcove 

They charge €2 to go inside

...a Roman necropolis that they unearthed while building a square, so they incorporated it into the square...

Tombs from ~2 AD

...the place where Picasso had his first ever public art show in 1900...

Creatively named The Four Cats 

Post-moderistic ornate or something 

Nice dragon; tough lighting to shoo, so let's try... 

...in-camera HDR. 

...to the remnants of the Roman walls, towers and aqueducts. You can actually get inside a tower; it's the Archdeacon's house and garden, built with a Roman wall as a backing...

The aqueduct enters the walls of the old city 

The towers mark a gate entrance

The back of the wall; the garden below 

The inside of a tower 

The glorious, serene courtyard

...to the also serene courtyard of the archives of the Crown of Aragorn. Hiding in this building: the original Capitulations of Santa Fe that was issued Christopher Columbus for his little jaunt of 1492...

The Archives 

The courtyard 

A pretty place

...which leads to a square with mystery underneath. One for a future day: exploring the Roman ruins discovered under this square, now in the basement of the buildings.

The tower overlooking the square

Hiding under here is a whole city

Around here, we opted to run back up to the Encants market to pick up that Blue Rodeo 45 that I found last week -- except the vendor who was selling it wasn't there. Sigh. So we headed back to the Barri and the Cathedral.

In an interesting bit of crowd management, the Cathedral of Barcelona (more correctly, the Cathedral of the Holy Cross and Saint Eulalia) is open all day, but they charge you to go in from ~11 AM to ~5 PM. Early AM and late PM it's free. We arrived at 5:30 PM expecting to walk in, but there was a big line, we surmised because they let all the people out who paid before letting us freeloaders in. The church was mostly built in the 14th Century, and is named for the martyr Eulalia, who is entombed in the church. First the exteriors; some of these photos are from when we walked past the other day.

A typical mid-day crowd 

Pointy 

Very pointy 

The rear looks like a bit of a pincushion

The inside was nice but a bit disappointing for me. There are 29 ornate side chapels, a choir loft smack dab in the middle, and lots of stripes, but it didn't wow me like a lot of churches I have been in.

On entrance 

Roof detail 

The alter area 

The choir lot in the middle of the church 

More on the alter 

One of the rear walls 

Column detail 

The crypt with the tomb of Eulalia

There are two historic artifacts inside; The Cruicifix of Lepanto, which survived on the prow of a ship in the battle of Lepanto in 1571 (no photos allowed), and the baptismal font used to baptize the first Carib indians that Columbus brought back from that jaunt in 1492 mentioned earlier.

An historic tub

You can go onto the roof of the Cathedral for €3. Don't bother. On top of St. Peters in Rome is an awesome gelatto stop. The top of the Barcelona Cathedral is scaffolding, because the roof isn't flat enough to walk on, and the views are only OK because the roof isn't that tall (unless you like rooftops; you can see a lot of rooftops).

Wow. Rooftops. 

Hey! More rooftops! 

Dramatic lighting of the towers

The best reason to visit the Cathedral is to visit the cloister. Again, serene. A lovely pond. 13 geese, one for each year of Eualia's life. A cool drinking fountain. Nifty floor tiles commemorating the guild that paid for the cloister.

A goose 

The drinking fountain 

The lovely arches 

The other fountain in the pond

A frog 

Paid for by the shoemakers... 

Paid for by the scissor makers 

Most of the geese

Not sure how far we walked today; it was a 30 min jaunt just to walk home from the Cathedral and the walking tour was 1.5 km (though we probably did double that). Between that and a cold, no wonder I was beat after the day.