Barcelona Cathedral

Christians have been worshipping on this spot since the fourth century, and the building you see today is the third church to stand here. Count Ramon Berenguer I and his wife Almodis began a Romanesque cathedral on these foundations in 1046, but the current Gothic structure wasn't started until May 1, 1298. It took 150 years to build — the cloister was completed in 1448 — and then Barcelona ran out of money for the facade, leaving a plain flat wall for over four centuries.

That unfinished front didn't get its elaborate neo-Gothic makeover until 1882 to 1913, when architects Josep Oriol Mestres and August Font i Carreras finally gave the cathedral the ornate entrance it deserved, funded by a wealthy banker named Manuel Girona. So the facade that looks the most medieval is actually the newest part — younger than many of Barcelona's Modernista buildings.

Inside, the cathedral is dedicated to the Holy Cross and Saint Eulalia, Barcelona's co-patron saint who, according to tradition, was martyred by the Romans at the age of thirteen. Her alabaster sarcophagus sits in the crypt, and the cloister houses thirteen white geese — one for each year of her life. The geese have lived in the cathedral's cloister garden since at least the medieval period, and their honking echoes off the Gothic arches in a way that never stops being surreal.

The cloister itself is a hidden jewel: a palm-shaded courtyard with a moss-covered fountain and that flock of geese, tucked away from the tourist crush of the Barri Gotic. Look for the small chapel doors ringing the walkway — there are twenty-six of them, each paid for by a different medieval trade guild.