1891 Map of Barcelona's Gothic Quarter and its Proposed Reconstruction

This rare 1891 map of Barcelona's Old City, or Ciutat Vella, captures a moment during the rapid urban renewal that took place in Barcelona in the latter half of the 19th century. The plan narrowly focuses on the Ciutat Vella, and superimposes (in color) the proposed layout over the convoluted warren of streets characterizing the old city. The edge of the plan hints at Barcelona's newly instituted grid of octagonal blocks, with which the planned new arrangement of streets in the old city were intended to be consonant. That grid had been implemented in the surrounding Eixample district after 1860 on the plan of Ildefons Cerdà i Sunyer; Cerdà's plan, however, had not been applied to this, the oldest part of the city. Despite the removal of the medieval city walls, the claustrophobic layout of the Ciutat Vella remained untouched by the redevelopment apparent on the rest of the plan: hence the purpose of this plan's publication. In 1891, in response to royal decrees of April 12, 1887 and July 14, 1889, A municipal ordinance was issued to plan the radical reconstruction of the old city. The ordinance was accompanied by an appendix of three plans: one of the entire Eixample district surrounding Barcelona, one of the Municipality of Barcelona itself, and this present work, focused specifically on the Ciutat Vella, to illustrate the planned radical reconstruction of the city center. All three are credited to one D. J. M. Serra, and were executed in chromolithograph by the Barcelona photolithographer Thomas and Co. All three plans appear to exist in a single edition.

Publication History and Census

This plan is rare. It appears separately in no auction records or dealer catalogues. We see no examples of the individual map appearing in OCLC, and the full set appears in only two institutional collections, the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.