When workers restoring the disused Born market in 2002 began digging beneath the floor, they uncovered the streets and houses of the La Ribera district as they stood in 1714 — the year Barcelona fell to the Bourbon army after a 14-month siege, an event that ended Catalan self-rule and is still mourned every September 11th. Rather than rebuild over the find, the city turned the whole hall into a museum of memory.
The 1870s market itself is a beauty: a vast canopy of wrought iron and glass, one of the earliest and best of its kind in Spain. You can walk the raised walkways over the excavated foundations for free, peering down at the cellars, wells and cobbled lanes of the lost neighbourhood, or pay for the exhibitions that put the 1714 siege in context. It is an unusually thoughtful piece of public history, and a cool, shaded refuge on a hot afternoon in the Born.