Santa Maria del Mar is, without a doubt, the most beautiful church in Barcelona. Its walls emanate history and secrets. Located in the heart of Born neighborhood it is a spot you can not miss while you are visiting Barcelona. When we pass by its side or enter in it, we imagine what the city should be like at the time it was built.
It was built between 1329 and 1383 at the height of Aragon Kingdom’s maritime and mercantile preeminence. It is an outstanding example of Catalan Gothic, with a purity and unity of style that is very unusual in large medieval buildings.
From the outside, Santa Maria gives an impression of massive severity that belies the interior. It is hemmed in by the narrow streets of the Ribera, making it difficult to obtain an overall impression, except from the Fossar de les Moreres and the Plaça de Santa Maria, both of them former burial grounds. The latter is dominated by the west end of the church with its rose window. Images of Saint Peter and Saint Paul occupy niches on either side of the west door, and the tympanum shows the Saviour flanked by Our Lady and Saint John.The north-west tower was completed in 1496, but its companion was not finished until 1902.
In contrast with the exterior, the interior gives an impression of light and spaciousness. It is of the basilica type, with its three aisles forming a single space with no transepts and no architectural boundary between nave and presbytert. The simple ribbed vault is supported on slender octagonal columns, and abundant daylight streams in through the tall clerestorey windows.
The interior is almost devoid of imagery of the sort to be found in Barcelona’s other large Gothic churches, the cathedral and Santa Maria del Pi, after the fire which occurred in 1936 during anticlerical disturbances. Amongst the most notable of the works destroyed at that time was the Baroque retable by Deodat Casanoves and Salvador Gurri.
Ah! And a last curiosity! The spacing of the columns is the widest of any Gothic church in Europe—about forty-three feet apart, center to center.
