Description
The Museu d'Història de la Ciutat, the Museum of the History of Barcelona (MUHBA), takes you beneath the Gothic Quarter to the Roman town of Barcino. Its main site is on Plaça del Rei, where walkways run over more than 4,000 square meters of excavated streets and buildings.
The underground visit is the highlight. You walk over Roman streets and shops, a laundry, a dye works, a winery and the vats where fish was salted and garum, the Romans' fish sauce, was made. Further on lie the remains of the early Christian bishop's complex, with its baptistery.
The visit ends in the medieval royal palace, the Palau Reial Major. The vast Saló del Tinell, from the 14th century, has a roof held up by great round arches. The Chapel of Saint Agatha beside it holds a 15th-century altarpiece by Jaume Huguet.
Above ground, the late Gothic Casa Padellàs now hosts temporary exhibitions, and the museum also manages other sites around the city, such as the Temple of Augustus and the Roman sepulchral way.
In 1931 Casa Padellàs, a Gothic mansion of the 15th and 16th centuries, was taken apart stone by stone and moved to Plaça del Rei, to make way for the new Via Laietana. While it was being rebuilt, the workers found a whole Roman town underneath.
That town was Barcino, the colony from which Barcelona grew. Excavations went on until the Spanish Civil War, and the finds were so important that the site became the home of the long-planned history museum.
It was inaugurated on 14 April 1943, with the historian Agustí Duran i Sanpere as its first director. The early Christian baptistery was found in 1968, and the archaeological area was completely remodeled in 1998.
Today the museum, run by the city council, covers the city from its Roman origins to recent times, and it has grown into a network of heritage sites spread across Barcelona.
The underground visit is the highlight. You walk over Roman streets and shops, a laundry, a dye works, a winery and the vats where fish was salted and garum, the Romans' fish sauce, was made. Further on lie the remains of the early Christian bishop's complex, with its baptistery.
The visit ends in the medieval royal palace, the Palau Reial Major. The vast Saló del Tinell, from the 14th century, has a roof held up by great round arches. The Chapel of Saint Agatha beside it holds a 15th-century altarpiece by Jaume Huguet.
Above ground, the late Gothic Casa Padellàs now hosts temporary exhibitions, and the museum also manages other sites around the city, such as the Temple of Augustus and the Roman sepulchral way.
In 1931 Casa Padellàs, a Gothic mansion of the 15th and 16th centuries, was taken apart stone by stone and moved to Plaça del Rei, to make way for the new Via Laietana. While it was being rebuilt, the workers found a whole Roman town underneath.
That town was Barcino, the colony from which Barcelona grew. Excavations went on until the Spanish Civil War, and the finds were so important that the site became the home of the long-planned history museum.
It was inaugurated on 14 April 1943, with the historian Agustí Duran i Sanpere as its first director. The early Christian baptistery was found in 1968, and the archaeological area was completely remodeled in 1998.
Today the museum, run by the city council, covers the city from its Roman origins to recent times, and it has grown into a network of heritage sites spread across Barcelona.