Sant Pau del Camp

"Sant Pau del Camp is the oldest church in Barcelona, in the sense that it displays the most ancient visible elements to the visitor. It is small, at least by the standards of other Romanesque buildings in Catalunya. With its squat octagonal tower and rough walls, it looks more like a country church than a city one - and that is what it was, for in the twelfth century it stood well out in the fields beyond the city walls. Its compact facade speaks of theological determination: the crude bas-reliefs of the Evangelists - Saint Mark as a lion, for instance - and the hand of God the Father sculpted in a roundel above them, his fingers pointing to indicate the world he has just made and the invisible world beyond the visible one; the weird little masks beneath the corbels, much eroded by time; and on either side of the portal, two columns made up of seventh and eighth-century fragments (capitals, shafts, bases, none of them matching) that were all that survived of an earlier Christian chapel, dug out of its site."

Robert Hughs, Barcelona, 84-85

Music: La Danza de las Espadas (The Sword Dance) by Jordi Savall