LLEI D'ART 10

Art routes BARCELONA The Gothic Route Let us enter into the historic nucleus and centre of the ‘City of Counts’, into the Ciutat Vella (Old City) district, located on the old Roman remains of the city, although during the Medieval period, the profusion of churches and Gothic palaces did away with practically all of them. The city was initially built around two axes in the upper part of the city (the Mons Taber , today’s Sant Jaume Square), the cardus and decumanus , a structure which survived until the 19 th century. This was a time when serious changes occurred and not always positive, historically speaking: examples might be the conversion of parish cemeteries into public squares, the clearing of buildings and the demolishing of the Roman walls. Fortunately, remains of the first wall of Barcelona can be seen in Cathedral Square. The Ciutat Vella area is made up of smaller districts like ‘El Call’, or Jewish Quarter, Sants Just and Pastor, and Catedral, amongst others. A leisurely walk around the narrow streets to discover some of its remotest corners is a delightful experience, and as such, so as not to lose our good manners, we sug- gest a logical route that will allow us to see some of the architectural jewels hidden in the centre of the city. Thus, we begin our route around Gothic Barcelona from the so-called Portal del Ángel (Angel’s Gate), named for one of the oldest entrances to the city. The name dates from the beginning of the 15 th century when Saint Vicente Ferrer returned from preaching in the Vallés region close to the city; as he arrived at the gate, an angel appeared to him, sword in hand, as the guardian of the city. Later on, the authorities asked the angel that had appeared to the saint for help with the plague that was punishing the city and promised that if the plague passed, they would erect a chapel in the same place as the angel had first appears to Saint Vicente. The sculpture of the angel is currently on the façade of the Bank of Spain building, in the popular Catalunya Square. The avenue is pedestrianised and is particularly busy with shops and tourists, as well as imaginative street performance. If we walk down the Portal and turn down Santa Anna Street, we can find the parish church of the same name. The church has great artistic and architectural value with its Christ on the cross –destroyed in 1936, at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War– and the Saint Sepulchre sculpture, a copy of the original by Gabriel Guàrdia, currently found in the Diocesan Museum. The reproduction is by the Granada religious artist José Barbero. Before we dive into the real heart of this Gothic Quarter, it is worth stopping in Els Quatre Gats on Montsió Street, the legendary home of Catalan Modernisme created in 1897, where figures such as Santiago Rusiñol i Prats, Ramón Casas i Carbó, Joaquim Mir Trinxet o Miquel Utrillo had dinners and endless discussions with other exceptional characters like Picasso, Albéniz, Enrique Granados, Lluís Millet, Gaudí, Nonell, Opisso or Ruben Darío, which whom they organised exhibitions with live music, Chinese shadows puppets and marionettes, sampling what Rusiñol himself called ‘the succour of the spirit’. The activities they 127