We presently pass the Bishop’s Palace, an eighteenth-century structure incorporating some late Romanesque arcading. But leaving other interesting buildings in this the oldest quarter of Barcelona for the moment, we will seek the next most notable church in the town, that of Santa Maria del Mar. It occupies the site of the earliest shrine of Santa Eulalia, over which Bishop Aetius built a temple in the thousandth year of our era. This modest church was replaced by another in the year 1329, which was restored and reconsecrated after a disastrous fire in 1383 under the reign of Pedro the Ceremonious. All classes of the community assisted in the work. Those who could not give money gave their labour, and in commemoration of this two small bronze figures carrying stone and timber adorn the principal door. The edifice is a good example of the Catalan church in its breadth and height of nave and simplicity of plan. Like the cathedral, it forms a parallelogram rounded at the east end, and presents an unbroken line of wall to the exterior. Churches of this type usually consist of nave only, but Santa Maria del Mar has two aisles. Enormous octagonal columns carry the main arches and the groining ribs which all spring from their capitals. The wall rib towards the nave is carried up higher than the main arches, so as to allow space between them for a small circular and traceried clerestory window in each bay. The arches of the apse are very narrow, and enormously stilted. There are small windows above them, but they are modernised. The aisles are groined on the same level as the main arches, a few feet, therefore, below the vault of the nave, and they are lighted by a four-light traceried window in each bay, the sill of which is above the string-course formed by continuing the abacus of the capitals of the groining shafts. Below this are three arches in each bay, opening into side chapels between the main buttresses. Each of these chapels is lighted by a traceried window of two lights, and the outer wall presents a long unbroken line, until above the chapels, when the buttresses rise boldly up to support the great vaults of the nave and aisles.[A] The interior, though still simple and dignified, has been marred by modern restorations. Another peculiarity remains to be noted: the choir is placed behind the high altar. Of this latter, a costly but churrigueresque erection, the less said the better. The royal pew in the south aisle, recalling the days when Barcelona was a capital, was connected with the palace by a gallery now destroyed. The church contains some good glass and examples of the art of Villadomat, a painter of whom Catalonia can boast. His fate was extremely sad: for the last seventeen years of his long life, he was paralysed in both hands. [A] Street, “Gothic Architecture in Spain.”