Santa Maria del Pi

Santa Maria del Pi tickets: which one to buy

A modest ticket covers the church, the small museum in the chapterhouse and the bell tower, and the combined version is the only one worth buying. The tower is 54 metres and about 150 steps, with a view over the Gothic Quarter and the Ramblas that is better than anything from street level. Guitar and flamenco concerts are staged in the nave most evenings and are ticketed separately by promoters;

the rose window as a backdrop is the selling point, and the acoustics are good. Guided tours of the Barri Gotic include the church and cost several times the ticket. The basilica is two minutes from the Ramblas on the Placa del Pi, which holds a farmers' market at weekends. Nothing needs booking except concerts. Concert tickets are sold at the door and online, and the same programme is repeated most nights of the week.

Visiting Santa Maria del Pi: what to see

A church stood outside the walls here in 987, dedicated to Our Lady of the Pine Tree, and the present building went up between 1319 and 1391 in Catalan Gothic: a single wide nave with no aisles, buttresses drawn inside to form chapels, and almost no ornament, which is the opposite of the French Gothic model. The rose window over the west door is one of the largest in Europe, ten metres across, rebuilt after a fire in 1936 when anarchists burned the church at the start of the civil war; almost everything inside dates from after that.

The bell tower was begun in 1379 and finished in 1497. Two small squares flank the church, the Placa del Pi and the Placa Sant Josep Oriol, and both are among the pleasantest places to sit in the old city. The chapel of the Blood holds a processional group carried through Barcelona on Good Friday, and the crypt below the nave is open on request. A fire in 1936 destroyed the baroque fittings, the organ and the archives, and the interior was rebuilt plainly, which paradoxically returned it closer to its Gothic original.

Santa Maria del Pi opening hours and the best time to go

Open daily from mid-morning to early evening, closing during mass, with the tower keeping shorter hours and closing in bad weather. The Gothic Quarter is crowded from morning to night for most of the year; the church itself takes a fraction of that traffic. The rose window faces west and lights the nave in the late afternoon, which is the hour to be inside.

Barcelona is hot in August and the stone interior is cool. Dress modestly. Photography without flash is allowed. Allow forty minutes with the tower. The cathedral is five minutes east and the Santa Maria del Mar, the other great Catalan Gothic church, fifteen minutes beyond it. The Placa del Pi market sells honey, cheese and artisan food on the first and third weekends of each month.