Ajuntament

On Plaça de Sant Jaume, right across from the Generalitat, stands the complimentary (and sometimes conflicting) centre of power in Catalonia, Barcelona's city hall.

Jaume I sowed the seeds for the Ajuntament (literally, city council) at the same time as the Generalitat, when he appointed a committee of 20 peers in 1249; by 1272 this had evolved into the annually selected Consell de Cent (Council of a Hundred), which ruled the city until 1714.

It proved to be one of Europe’s most successful representative governments, partly through its unusual flexibility: tradesmen as well as patricians served. To avoid politicking, names of approved candidates were chosen by lottery.

Like the Generalitat, the Ajuntament's palace got a dull neoclassical façade, but also like the Generalitat it's good Gothic underneath; a part of the original can be seen on C/ de la Ciutat, watched over by Santa Eulàlia. The oldest part of the building, the Saló de Cent by Pere Llobet (1372), has round ribs reminiscent of Saló de Tinell; it was restored by Domènech i Montaner in the 1880s.