Address
Plaça Nova
08002 Barcelona
Plaça Nova (“new square”) is the place where Barcelona's oldest neighborhood festivals are held (Sant Roc festivals, celebrated every single year since 1589). It is the access to one of the old gates of the Roman colony of Barcino (located on a small hill that today is the true center of the Gothic Quarter). Precisely the name of the Roman colony BARCINO is what inspired Joan Brossa to make a sculpture in which the letters of its name are a compass, a sun, a moon, a pyramid... and looking up, the 3 friezes designed by Pablo Ruiz Picasso and realized by the Swede Carl Nesjar in 1962, on the front and sides of the unique building of the Official College of Architects of Catalonia, built by the architect Xavier Busquets i Sindreu.
The fact is that this tiny square, today disfigured, has vestiges of Roman walls and aqueducts, medieval buildings, and more recent heritage. As a good meeting place, a total of 5 roads converge there. Could you look at them all and remember their names?
