El Born Cultural Centre: The Buried City of 1714
Why is it significant?
Step inside the airy, soaring cast-iron and glass structure of the Born Cultural Centre, inaugurated in eighteen seventy-six as the city's first grand iron covered market.
Key Facts
| Place | El Born Cultural Centre: The Buried City of 1714 |
|---|---|
| Address | Plaça Comercial 12, 08003 Barcelona |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.38560, 2.18730 |
| Part of Walk | Barcelona Gothic & Seaside: Roman Walls, Picasso's Youth, and the Old Port |
| Generated | Generated |
Step inside the airy, soaring cast-iron and glass structure of the Born Cultural Centre, inaugurated in eighteen seventy-six as the city's first grand iron covered market. Look over the modern viewing balustrades into the sunken excavation below: beneath the floor lies an entire buried district of medieval and seventeenth-century stone streets frozen in time.
Following the brutal eleven-month Siege of Barcelona in seventeen fourteen during the War of the Spanish Succession, victorious King Philip the Fifth abolished Catalonia's ancient constitutions and ordered over twelve hundred homes in this neighborhood demolished with explosives to clear an artillery firing range for his massive military citadel, La Ciutadella.
As you look down at the exposed cobblestone streets, sewage canals, tavern cellars, and cannonballs embedded in stone doorways, you are looking at the poignant ground zero of modern Catalan identity, commemorated annually on September eleventh, the National Day of Catalonia.
Walk south toward the palm trees and salty breezes of Port Vell.