La Seu, the cathedral

The façade, which is the best story here

The Gothic cathedral was begun on 1 May 1298, under Jaume II, on the site of a Romanesque cathedral consecrated in 1058 and, before that, an early Christian basilica and Roman buildings. It was built from the east end westwards. The plain west front was reached in 1417 and the cloister finished in 1448 — about a hundred and fifty years' work.

And then the front was left blank for four and a half centuries, because the money ran out.

What stands there now is neo-Gothic: the façade built between 1887 and 1890 by Josep Oriol Mestres, working up a fifteenth-century design attributed to a master called Carlí that had never been executed, and the central spire added between 1906 and 1912 by August Font i Carreras. The whole was finished in 1913.

It was paid for privately, by the banker and industrialist Manuel Girona, and completed by his children after his death. So the most medieval-looking thing in the Gothic Quarter is a monument to nineteenth-century banking — which is of a piece with the rest of the quarter, much of which was rebuilt in the same spirit around the same time.

What is actually old, and what to look for

• The chapel of Santa Llúcia, off the cloister, is the oldest part of the complex and predates the Gothic church; it was absorbed into it.
• The crypt beneath the high altar holds the alabaster tomb of Saint Eulàlia, the city's co-patron, carved in the fourteenth century. Eulàlia was, by tradition, a girl of thirteen martyred under Diocletian around the year 303. The legends of her death are various and lurid — she is said to have been rolled down a street in a barrel of knives, and is conventionally shown with the X-shaped cross she was crucified on — and they are legends.
• The choir stalls in the middle of the nave are fifteenth-century, with painted coats of arms added for a meeting of the Order of the Golden Fleece held here in 1519.
• The Christ of Lepanto, in the Capella del Santíssim Sagrament by the entrance, is the crucifix said to have been carried on Don Juan of Austria's galley at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. The figure leans markedly to one side, and the story is that it bent to dodge a cannonball. It is a good story.
• The Capella de Sant Benet holds a fifteenth-century altarpiece and is easily walked past.
• The Jewish heritage display is a recent addition, recording the medieval community of El Call and the cathedral's own connection to it.

The geese

There are thirteen white geese in the cloister pool, and there always are thirteen. The traditional explanation is that Eulàlia was thirteen when she died. An older tradition connects geese to the Roman habit of keeping them as sentries, which is the kind of thing that may or may not be true.

The cloister is the best part of the building and the reason to come even for people who do not much like cathedrals: palms and magnolias, a mossy fountain, and the city noise shut out completely.

The roofs

The roof terraces are open to visitors and are reached by lift, which is entered through the chapel of the Sants Innocents beside the Porta de Sant Iu. The view is of the old town roofline at close quarters, with the Sagrada Família's towers beyond — a better view of the quarter than any street gives.

Visiting

Entry is charged, hours differ sharply between weekdays, Saturdays and Sundays, and Sunday opening is short because the building is in use. Reduced-mobility access is from the Porta de Santa Eulàlia on Carrer del Bisbe rather than the main front. The ticket generally covers the church, the cloister, the choir, the chapter house and the roofs.

One thing older accounts overstate: the cathedral is sometimes called one of the largest religious buildings in Europe. It is not. It is a fine, wide, dark Catalan Gothic cathedral of middling size — Seville, Milan and Cologne are all in a different league — and its quality has nothing to do with its dimensions.

Shoulders and knees covered. General practicalities for the city are on the Barcelona page.