El Palau Reial Major

The Palau Reial Major ('Grand Royal Palace') and the Santa Maria del Mar church bear witness to the Barcelona that became a giant mercantile area in the Middle Ages. The streets you'll stroll through on this itinerary are part of an urban network that started out more than eight hundred years ago and are named after the different trades that developed from the Middle Ages. Some houses still stand that show how the craftsmen of the time lived, and some buildings on C/Montcada, for example, still show off the opulence of the city's large houses of that time.