Description
Santa Maria del Mar, "Saint Mary of the Sea", is a Gothic church in the Ribera district of Barcelona's old town, a short walk from the Born. Built between 1329 and 1383, it is Catalan Gothic at its purest, with a calm, airy interior.
In Barcelona, kings and bishops had their cathedral. The people of the Ribera, the waterfront quarter of sailors, merchants and craftsmen, wanted a church of their own, and built it themselves. Backed by the common people rather than the nobility, every guild of the quarter took part, and the port's stevedores gave their own time and labor.
From the outside it looks severe, a fortress of stone hemmed in by narrow lanes. Inside it opens up: three aisles flow into a single space with no transepts, slender octagonal columns hold up simple ribbed vaults, and daylight pours in through tall windows.
The columns stand about 43 feet apart, the widest spacing of any Gothic church in Europe. The designer, Berenguer de Montagut, worked in medieval feet of 33 centimeters, and the numbers add up: 100 feet wide, 100 feet high.
The church went up at a speed unheard of in the Middle Ages: the first stone was laid in 1329 and the last in 1383. The walls and chapels were done by 1350, and the church was consecrated in 1384.
It was backed by the common people, not by the nobility, which is why it feels like the city's own church.
The rose window over the west door was rebuilt in the Flamboyant style, finished by 1459, after the 1428 earthquake destroyed the first one. Statues of Saint Peter and Saint Paul stand on either side of the door.
The bareness inside has a story. In 1936, at the start of the Civil War, anticlerical rioters set the church on fire, and it burned for eleven days. The Baroque altarpiece and most of the images were lost. The architecture survived, which is why you can see the view down the nave with no wall between aisles and altar.
When new stained glass was needed after the fire, FC Barcelona was asked to chip in. It agreed, on one condition: that its crest appear on one of the windows.
Don't miss
• The octagonal columns.
• The rose window.
• The view down the nave.
• The stained-glass windows.
Did you know?
• The construction is the backdrop of Ildefonso Falcones's best-selling novel Cathedral of the Sea, adapted by Netflix in 2018.
• One of its two towers was finished in 1496, the other only in 1902.
In Barcelona, kings and bishops had their cathedral. The people of the Ribera, the waterfront quarter of sailors, merchants and craftsmen, wanted a church of their own, and built it themselves. Backed by the common people rather than the nobility, every guild of the quarter took part, and the port's stevedores gave their own time and labor.
From the outside it looks severe, a fortress of stone hemmed in by narrow lanes. Inside it opens up: three aisles flow into a single space with no transepts, slender octagonal columns hold up simple ribbed vaults, and daylight pours in through tall windows.
The columns stand about 43 feet apart, the widest spacing of any Gothic church in Europe. The designer, Berenguer de Montagut, worked in medieval feet of 33 centimeters, and the numbers add up: 100 feet wide, 100 feet high.
The church went up at a speed unheard of in the Middle Ages: the first stone was laid in 1329 and the last in 1383. The walls and chapels were done by 1350, and the church was consecrated in 1384.
It was backed by the common people, not by the nobility, which is why it feels like the city's own church.
The rose window over the west door was rebuilt in the Flamboyant style, finished by 1459, after the 1428 earthquake destroyed the first one. Statues of Saint Peter and Saint Paul stand on either side of the door.
The bareness inside has a story. In 1936, at the start of the Civil War, anticlerical rioters set the church on fire, and it burned for eleven days. The Baroque altarpiece and most of the images were lost. The architecture survived, which is why you can see the view down the nave with no wall between aisles and altar.
When new stained glass was needed after the fire, FC Barcelona was asked to chip in. It agreed, on one condition: that its crest appear on one of the windows.
Don't miss
• The octagonal columns.
• The rose window.
• The view down the nave.
• The stained-glass windows.
Did you know?
• The construction is the backdrop of Ildefonso Falcones's best-selling novel Cathedral of the Sea, adapted by Netflix in 2018.
• One of its two towers was finished in 1496, the other only in 1902.