Barcelona Cathedral

Why go

Barcelona Cathedral is the Cathedral of the Holy Cross and Saint Eulalia, which its own site calls the first church of the Archdiocese of Barcelona; it is not the Sagrada Família. The cathedral's history page says the Gothic building was begun on 1 May 1298 on the foundations of a paleo-Christian basilica and a Romanesque cathedral, that the cloister was finished in 1448, and that the façade and side towers were built from the end of the 19th century at the initiative of the industrialist Manuel Girona, whose children finished the work with the cimborio in 1913. The cathedral sells tickets for a cultural and tourist visit, and its visitable-spaces page lists the cathedral floor and cloister, the roof, reached by a lift, the choir and the Chapter Hall, which is a museum space. Its visiting page names three gates: the main gate on Pla de la Seu, the Santa Eulàlia gate on Carrer del Bisbe and the Sant Iu gate.