Former Archdeacon´ s House

It is located in front of the Cathedral and the Roman wall, in the Gothic quarter. It is a building with a mixture of purely Gothic and clearly Renaissance elements. But its current design comes from the beginning of the XVI Century. During this Century it was reformed when the archdeacon Lluís Desplà unified the different Archdeacon´ s buildings in only one palace. With this reform the house became a Renaissance small palace.

Inside the house you can visit the vertical face of the Roman wall and the arcades of the aqueduct, from the I Century B.C, that supplied the city with water. There is a beautiful Gothic fountain that was designed by the famous architect Doménech and a sophisticated mail box made of marble and decorated with three gulls and a tortoise for its door of entrance.

In this house lived the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Archdeacons from the XIV Century when the Cathedral of Barcelona started to have its current Gothic design. Nowadays, in the upper floor, and since 1921 the Historical Archive of Barcelona has its headquarters here.