Barri Gòtic

This is where it all started, the site of Barcelona's Cathedral and its seats of government. For all that, it's a rather calm, low-key neighbourhood, more like the centre of Paris than the businesslike centre of London. Much of it is predominantly residential; tourists and locals get along nicely on narrow streets that can be 2,000 years old.

In any city founded by the Romans, you can look at a map and pick out the telltale shape of the Roman castrum, identical from Britain to the Euphrates: a rectangle bisected two ways by the main streets, the cardo and decumanus, with a forum near their intersection. In Roman Barcino, the rectangle became slightly rounded, in the loop between the curving C/ Banys Nous, C/ d’Avinyó and Vía Laietana.The gentle hill of Mons Tàber was Barcino’s 'capitol', and here the institutions of medieval Barcelona took root over the ruins of their Roman predecessors.