This self-guided Barcelona Gothic Quarter walking tour covers 6 stops in approximately 2 hours, starting at Carrer de Santa Anna and ending at La Capella. The route includes Plaça de Sant Felip Neri, Pont del Bisbe, Carrer de la Pietat and a pastry stop at La Colmena — one of Barcelona’s oldest pastry shops, open since 1849.
The Gothic Quarter is the neighbourhood everyone thinks they know and almost nobody has actually seen. Tourists come in through the Ramblas, reach the Cathedral and leave. That’s it. But there’s another Gòtic — the one with squares that don’t appear on paper maps, alleyways that smell of damp stone, buildings that have been watching each other in silence for centuries. This Barcelona Gothic Quarter walking tour covers that other Gòtic. Two hours on foot, six stops, and one very necessary pastry break.
Carrer de Santa Anna: modernism, graffiti and eight hundred years of history
We start here, two steps from Plaça de Catalunya, where the noise cuts out abruptly. Carrer de Santa Anna is one of those streets people rush through — but if you stop, there’s a lot to see. The building on the corner already gives you your first shot: a modernist pointed arch, columns with capitals, rounded arches… and the entire base covered in graffiti. Barcelona in a single frame.
But the best part is further down. Almost hidden between the buildings, the Església de Santa Anna appears — a Romanesque and Gothic temple founded in the 12th century that seems frozen in time. It’s been there for eight hundred years. Entry costs €4 and it’s worth every cent.
My tip
Before going in, stop at the corner of the modernist building and shoot upward. The perspective of the pointed arch against the sky, with the two streets opening up on either side, is a shot very few people take at this spot.
Plaça de Sant Felip Neri: the square that holds its scars
Walking down from Santa Anna into the heart of the neighbourhood, the alleyways narrow and the noise disappears. And then, suddenly, Plaça de Sant Felip Neri. You need to be here early. Before it fills up with children running around and tourists hunting for the perfect angle, it has a stillness you won’t find anywhere else in the barrio.
It’s small, almost intimate. A fountain at the centre, trees that barely let the light through, and an austere church at the far end. But what strikes me most, every time I come back, are the marks on the facade of that church. They’re not bullet holes — they’re shrapnel.
On 30 January 1938, Italian aviation allied with Franco bombed this square for over two hours. The church was being used as a shelter for children evacuated from war zones. Forty-two people died, most of them children. Only the facade was left standing. For years, Francoist propaganda spread the story that the marks came from the shooting of priests — a lie used to cover up what had really happened. The square you see today, with its Renaissance facades and octagonal fountain, is actually a reconstruction from the 1950s. Municipal architect Adolf Florensa moved facades from other bombed Barcelona buildings to this site. But the church was never fully restored. The scars were left visible on purpose.
Since 2007 there’s a small plaque on the wall. Few people find it.
My tip
Come on a weekday early in the morning and find the backlit angle from the entrance arch. The square in the background, the fountain centred, the cold morning light cutting across the buildings. But before shooting, look closely at the facade. The stone still holds everything that happened here.
Pont del Bisbe: the bridge that carries a curse
Two minutes’ walk from Sant Felip Neri is one of the places I love showing people most. Few spots in Barcelona combine the spectacular and the strange quite like the Pont del Bisbe. A neo-Gothic pointed arch bridge connecting two institutional buildings at mid-height over Carrer del Bisbe, built in 1928 but looking like it was pulled straight from the Middle Ages.
The official story credits architect Joan Rubió i Bellver. The unofficial story adds that he — furious at being refused permission to reform the entire neighbourhood in Gothic style — carved a skull into the base of the bridge to curse anyone who passed beneath it. I don’t know if it works, but the skull is there. Look for it.
My tip
The best photograph of the bridge is not the one everyone takes from the middle of the street — you’ve seen that one a thousand times. Find the frame from the southern end of the carrer, with the arch closing off the perspective and the lateral buildings compressing the space. If you’re lucky and the morning is overcast, the diffused light brings out every detail of the stone without harsh shadows.
Carrer de la Pietat: the alley almost nobody actually looks at
Literally around the corner from the bridge. This is one of those places people walk through without stopping because they’re in a hurry to reach the Cathedral. Mistake.
Carrer de la Pietat is the back entrance to Barcelona Cathedral, and in it there’s something very few photographers take advantage of: a 15th-century Gothic bas-relief embedded in the wall that goes completely unnoticed. Right above the side door. A piece of brutal delicacy in a corner nobody looks at because everyone’s neck is turned toward the main facade.
Frame tight, look for the texture of the stone, let the architecture fill the shot. This alley is narrow — the light changes completely depending on the time of day. In the morning it comes in raking from the east and lifts the relief out of the stone. In the afternoon it falls into shadow and the contrast flattens out.
La Colmena: the sweet stop you deserve
There’s a moment on every good route when you have to stop. Not because your legs demand it — though that too — but because the rhythm needs it. Walking down toward Plaça de l’Àngel, that moment arrives on its own: La Colmena.
They’ve been making Catalan pastries here since 1849. They haven’t changed the sign, they haven’t put in design furniture, they haven’t opened an Instagram account. They just keep doing what they know: genuinely good pastries, served by people who know the name of every single thing in the cabinet.
Get the xuixo de crema. It’s long, fried, filled with pastry cream and rolled in sugar. It’s excessive. It’s perfect. If you have room, add the bosquilla d’anís — it tastes like old Barcelona and Sunday morning at your grandparents’ place.
📍 Plaça de l’Àngel, 12 · Open every day 9:00 to 21:00h
La Capella: when contemporary art moves into a Gothic church
The perfect close to this route. From La Colmena we cross toward the Raval to reach La Capella — a 15th-century Gothic chapel on Carrer de l’Hospital that now works as an emerging art space run by Barcelona City Council. Free entry. Rotating exhibitions. And an interior that never leaves you indifferent.
The contrast between the medieval architecture — ribbed vaults, dark stone, vertical proportions — and the contemporary installations it holds creates a visual tension that’s hard to find anywhere else in the city. It’s not the MACBA. It’s not a commercial gallery. It’s something else entirely.
📍 Carrer de l’Hospital, 56 · Tuesday to Saturday 12:00 to 20:00h · Sundays 11:00 to 14:00h · Closed Mondays
What makes this route special
It’s not the longest. It doesn’t hit the most famous spots. But it has something the standard routes don’t: it lets you see the Gòtic the way someone who lives there sees it. Squares without tourists, alleyways with history, the corner building that’s been there for decades and you always ignored because something bigger was next door.
The Barri Gòtic is not a film set. It’s a neighbourhood that breathes, that has scars and layers and corners that only reveal themselves when you stop rushing.
Take the two hours. Stop at La Colmena. Look for the skull on the Pont del Bisbe. Step inside the cloister of Santa Anna.
It’s worth it.
Join one of my Photo Tours and discover the angles, the light and the history that only someone who truly loves Barcelona knows.
