Built between 1329 and 1383, Santa Maria del Mar is the finest expression of Catalan Gothic anywhere in the city, and arguably its most beautiful church. It went up astonishingly fast for a medieval building — just 54 years — which gives it a rare stylistic unity: soaring octagonal columns spaced unusually far apart, a single uninterrupted sweep of nave and aisles, and walls that seem to dissolve into light. The bastaixos, the dockworkers who hauled the stone down from the Montjuïc quarry on their backs, are remembered in carvings on the great bronze doors.
The church was gutted by fire during the Civil War, which stripped away the Baroque additions and left the bare Gothic stone the architects had intended. Buy a ticket for the guided rooftop visit if you can — climbing the narrow stairs to walk along the terraces, with the towers of the Born and the sea beyond, is one of the quieter pleasures of the old city. Ildefonso Falcones's bestselling novel Cathedral of the Sea made the building famous well beyond Barcelona.