Sant Pere, Santa Caterina i la Ribera

Have you explored the neighborhoods of Barcelona’s old city? The Ciutat Vella (literally “old city”) is the oldest district in the city of Barcelona and is sandwiched between the relatively newer Eixample district and the sea. Within the district are El Raval, El Gòtic, La Barceloneta and three interlocking areas that form the Sant Pere, Santa Caterina i la Ribera neighborhood.

Statistics

Sant Pere, Santa Caterina i la Ribera is El Gòtic’s next-door neighbor. Its physical borders run from the Urquinaona and Arc de Triompf metro stops in the north to the Ronda Litoral and the Estació de Francia to the south, and from Via Laietana in the west all the way to the eastern edge of Parc de la Ciutadella. The entire park as well as the Barcelona Zoo are a part of the neighborhood.

Though there are many ways to reach this part of the city, the Jaume I metro stop on the yellow line—located halfway up Via Laietana—is a good place to start. Carrer de l'Argenteria, filled with shops and tapas bars, cuts a path straight from the metro to Santa Maria del Mar church. Like many of the ancient streets in this district, the street name reflects the profession of the people who traditionally lived on the street—in this case, silversmiths.

While Sant Pere and Santa Caterina were named after Catholic religious figures, La Ribera (literally “the shore”) got its name from its location on the edge of the sea.

The neighborhood covers 111,40 hectares and contains approximately 22,380 people, which means it has a dense population: 204 people per hectare. (There are 100 hectares in one square kilometer.) According to the city, there are 1551 businesses based in this tiny geographical region.

Like El Gòtic, many of the walls of this part of the city date back over 1,000 years. The past few decades have seen it transform into a warren of trendy coffee and craft beer bars, tapas restaurants, alternative fashion shops, artists’ studios, upscale hotels and indie design stores. As a result of the ever-increasing demand for apartments and commercial property in this area, the property prices have almost doubled since 2013.

The southern part of La Ribera, known as El Born, is extremely popular with tourists and younger people looking for a party. While the northern part of La Ribera, Sant Pere and Santa Caterina contains its fair share of tourist attractions and trendy spots, it’s also home to many working-class, often immigrant families.

The percentage of foreign-born residents in the neighborhood overall is over 40%. While British, American, French and other wealthy countries’ Erasmus students or summer holiday-ers are often found inhabiting the numerous temporary vacation apartments that populate both this area and the adjacent El Gòtic, the greatest number of foreigners who live there year-round are likely to be from Italy, Morocco, Pakistan or the Philippines.

Efforts by the city to “revitalize” the neighborhood by getting rid of lower-income housing in favor of pricey residential or commercial properties have received pushback from the area’s inhabitants.

History

Carrer de Montcada, one of the most important roads in the neighborhood, was part of a parcel of land that was a gift from Count Ramon Berenguer IV to wealthy local merchant Guillem Ramon de Montcada in the year 1148. The settlement that grew on this land, Vilanove de Mar, was right near the old city walls of Barcelona, and became one of the richest parts of the city by the 13th century. La Llotja was founded in Ribera in 1392 and was the first stock exchange to be established in Europe. The region would eventually be known as La Ribera, and Carrer de Montcada would become lined with ornate villas inhabited by successful businessmen and their families. Most of those villas are still standing, even though they’ve mostly been turned into museums and commercial properties.

The area continued to prosper until much of the trade was shifted away from the Ribera to the Port Vell. It slowly declined until the city was given a facelift for the Olympic Games in 1992, and waves of tourists started coming to Barcelona.

One of the most beautiful Gothic churches in the city, Santa Maria del Mar, is another historic landmark of Barcelona. It famously took only 55 years to construct back in the 14t century, which was dramatized in the book (now a Netflix series) by Ildefonso Falcones, The Cathedral of the Sea. There is a bar in the plaza next to the church called La Bastaix, in honor of the workers who built the basilica out of blocks of stone they carried on their backs.

That plaza, marked by an eternal flame, is known as the Fossar de les Moreres, and is the site of a mass grave of local soldiers who died during the Siege of Barcelona.

The wide pedestrian promenade, el Passeig del Born—now lined with a collection of expensive cocktail bars—that runs between Santa Maria del Mar and the 19th-century market-turned-museum Mercat del Born used to be the site of medieval tournaments and jousts.

The Market sits on top of archaeological ruins that are a part of the city that was demolished during and immediately after the Siege of Barcelona from 1713 to 1714, during the Spanish War of Succession. The site is now known as El Born Centre de Cultura i Memòria, and the ruins can be viewed through the glass floor that was installed to protect them.

Even though much of the neighborhood was badly damaged during the war, a number of historic buildings remain, and new landmarks would also be constructed in the centuries to follow.

The other significant market in the neighborhood, the Central Market Hall de Santa Caterina is one of these. It was originally built in 1848 and is still a functioning market to this day. It was redesigned in 2005 by Enric Miralles, one of the most famous modernista architects in Barcelona’s history, and is easily identifiable thanks to its colorful, wavy mosaic roof.

Things to Do

There’s a reason why tourists and natives alike flock to this area. It’s buildings and winding streets are picturesque, and packed with unique shops, bars, and galleries. There’s something new to see around every corner.

A number of the city’s most popular tourist attractions are packed into Sant Pere, Santa Caterina i la Ribera. El Palau de la Música Catalana is probably its most famous and most beautiful modernista landmark, though the imposing Arc de Triomf is equally unmistakable from afar.

There are a ton of museums in the neighborhood, too. The Museu de Picasso is located on Carrer de Montcada in one of the aforementioned ornate villas built by successful businessmen and traders generations ago. It is approximately three-minute walk from the Museu de Xocolata (the chocolate museum). The European Museum of Modern Art (MEAM), the Mammoth Museum (dedicated, you guessed it, to woolly mammoths,) and the Ethnology Museum are all nearby. The MUHBA Santa Caterina, located in the ground beneath the Santa Caterina Market, is an archaeological site managed by the Barcelona City History Museum containing the remains of a Dominican convent as well as other artifacts dating back to the Bronze Age.

The Born or Museu de Picasso aren’t only historic sites to be given a new life centuries after they were originally constructed. One of the city’s oldest convents, now converted into the Saint Augustine Convent Civic Center, is well worth a visit. Exhibitions, musical performances, and more take place in its patio surrounded by gothic arches and in its impressive interior. And square right next to the main Coreos building, Plaza Antonio Lopez, once housed the city’s historic fish market. The neoclassical building is still standing, but these days is the seat of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce. The Biblioteca Francesca Bonnemaison, the only library in the neighborhood, is also a landmark and a cultural institution.

Aire de Barcelona, the city’s largest Arabic baths, are located right next to the Parc de la Ciutadella. A little further south is the city’s most famous restaurant, 7 Portes, which offers traditional (though pricey) Catalan cuisine. This is also where world-famous flamenco dancer Carmen Amaya first performed as a child, dancing and collecting coins from passers-by while her father played guitar.

There is no shortage of food options in this region if you’re looking for something a little different. Right next door to 7 Portes is gourmet Mexican restaurant Oaxaca, whose food and margaritas are so good that you won’t even mind that their waiters may indignantly inform you that adding cheese on top is not how nachos are served in their restaurant, should you be foolish enough to ask.

There are all kinds of weird and wonderful food spots, from the trendy to the traditional, such as El Flako Corn Flakes & Co., where you can order (you guessed it) corn flakes to go, or the Vegan Junk Food Bar. La Taguara Areperia has the best Venezuelan take-out, and Milk Bar & Bistro was one of the first restaurants in town to offer American-style brunch (before that became a thing), with pancakes, eggs Benedict, gourmet burgers and Bloody Marys on offer.

For people interested in off-the-beaten path culture, there’s the über-authentic and space Antic Teatre, run by an arts collective, various skate shops and tattoo parlors, as well as a number of the city’s historic small music venues. Jamboree, its sister club Los Tarantos and Sidecar—offering jazz and soul, flamenco for tourists and rock, respectively—are all located in palm tree-lined Plaza Reial. A few streets over are Marula Café, which programs all kinds of musical genres, as well as Harlem Jazz Club.

Whatever your interests might be—history, art, food, music, architecture, underground culture —there’s no shortage of things to do and see in Sant Pere, Santa Caterina i la Ribera.