Plaça Nova and the Roman Gate of Bàrcino — Barcelona

Barcelona, Catalonia · 1st century BC · Roman city gate

At a glance

Two round towers stand at the eastern end of Plaça Nova, one built into the Casa de l’Ardiaca, the other into the Bishop’s Palace. They flanked the north-west gate of Bàrcino, the Roman colony founded under Augustus, and the street that runs between them — Carrer del Bisbe — is still the line of the ancient decumanus maximus. The gate itself had three passages. Only the towers survive.

Key facts

• Built: 1st century BC, at the foundation of Bàrcino; reinforced in the 4th century AD
• Masonry: opus quadratum, large squared blocks, dismantled and reused in the Middle Ages
• The gate: originally three passages; the two semicircular flanking towers remain
• Popular name: Portal del Bisbe, from the tower attached to the Bishop’s Palace
• Later work: windows cut in the 17th century, the towers joined by an arch that stood until the 19th
• Aqueduct: the arcade attached to one tower was reconstructed in 1958 on foundations found in the subsoil
• The houses built against the towers were cleared in 1955–58, when Plaça Nova took its present shape
• Coordinates: 41.3840035, 2.1754340

What you see

The towers read as two different buildings from two different centuries, because that is what they are. The lower courses are Roman, the big blocks laid dry and square. Above them the medieval city went on building in rougher stone, and cut windows where it wanted light. On the flank of one tower the reconstructed aqueduct arcade steps up towards the square, and a 16th-century shrine to Saint Roch, protector against epidemics, is set into the wall.

Turn round and the whole of Plaça Nova is a cleared space: benches, planted trees, a crowd. That openness is recent. Until the 1950s, houses stood against the Roman stone, and the towers were something you walked past without seeing.

Photographs

Practical information

• The towers stand on the public square and can be seen at any hour.
• Carrer del Bisbe, the street between them, is the Roman decumanus and leads to Plaça de Sant Jaume.

Sources

• Pobles de Catalunya — Portal del Bisbe (Porta Praetoria), Barcelona: the three-passage gate, the surviving towers, the 17th-century windows and connecting arch, the aqueduct arcade reconstructed in 1958, the shrine of Saint Roch
• Pobles de Catalunya — Torres romanes de la plaça Nova: 1st-century BC construction, 4th-century AD reinforcement, opus quadratum, medieval reuse, and the 1955–58 clearance of the square

Record researched and written by Luigi De Marchi for Cultural Heritage Online, 2026.

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