20/07/2026
Looks interesting
Plaça del Rei looks like an ordinary medieval square. But everything under your feet here used to be a working Roman city.
In the late 1920s, workers digging up this part of the Gothic Quarter to build a new avenue broke straight into the buried streets of Barcino, the Roman colony that eventually became Barcelona. What they found was so extensive that excavations continued for more than 30 years: paved roads, a w**e press, a fish sauce factory, a public laundry, and entire houses, still sitting where they were built almost 2,000 years ago.
Today that underground city covers about 43,000 square feet (4,000 square meters), making it one of the largest stretches of Roman ruins ever uncovered inside a European city. Visitors walk on the original stone streets, with the drains still cut into the floor.
Above it all, the square kept building its own history. The Saló del Tinell, the great hall on one side of the plaça, went up in 1370. In 1493, Ferdinand and Isabella stood inside it to receive Christopher Columbus on his return from the Americas, with no idea an entire Roman city was buried beneath their feet.
Since 1943, both layers have been open to the public together, as the Museu d'Història de Barcelona. One ticket gets you into the medieval halls above and the Roman city below.
