Barcelona's Gothic Quarter — the Barri Gòtic — is the dense, labyrinthine core of the old city, where Roman walls from the 1st century BC sit embedded in medieval façades and 14th-century cathedrals cast shadows over café terraces. It's one of the best-preserved historic centres in Europe, though 'preserved' is doing some work here: much of what looks authentically medieval was actually restored or embellished in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, giving the neighbourhood a theatrical quality that's hard to shake once you know it. That doesn't make it any less compelling — if anything, it makes it more Barcelona, a city that has always been comfortable staging its own mythology.
Neighbourhood