The same kind of roof exists still in the great hall of the Casa Consistorial, and evidently once existed also in the church which I shall presently mention in the Calle del Carmen. In England we have somewhat parallel examples at Mayfield and the Mote House, Ightham; but these Barcelonese examples are useful, as showing how, when a flat-pitched roof is of necessity adopted, a very good internal effect may nevertheless be secured. This church is now desecrated, and used as a sculptor’s workshop.
Another church, of which only the ruins now remain, in the Calle del Carmen, must, I presume, be Nuestra Señora del Carmen, founded in 1287.[307] This building was evidently greatly altered in the fourteenth century. It was first of all roofed with a flat roof, carried on arches across the nave, as at Sta. Agata, and subsequently the walls were raised and the church was groined. The groining is now destroyed, and behind it are seen the corbels in the cross wall marking the rake of the first roof. The aisles had roofs gabled north and south, and their windows good fourteenth-century tracery. This church of seven bays in length is 43 feet wide between the columns of the nave, and nearly 80 feet wide from north to south. Compared with Sta. Agata, it seems to prove that this class of timber-roofed church was introduced here between the early waggon-vaulting of the chapel of Sta. Lucia and of Sta. Ana, and the great quadripartite vaults of the cathedral and the other churches of its class.
The other churches here are not of much interest. The front of San Jayme has already been incidentally mentioned: its interior is modernized. San Miguel is probably a very early church, having a Roman mosaic pavement preserved in the floor. It has a pointed waggon-vault, and a sixteenth-century stone gallery at the west end. The western front has a rich west door, half Gothic and half Renaissance, with St. Michael and the dragon in the tympanum, and the Annunciation in the jambs. The flat gable has its old crocketed coping and cross, and two very small windows. The best feature is the tower, a simple structure, square in plan, from within the parapet of which, over the centre, rises a small square turret, open at the sides and roofed with four intersecting gables. It is a pretty arrangement for carrying a fifth bell, the other bells hanging in the belfry windows, in the Italian fashion. The church of San Anton has a groined narthex or porch all across the west front, with three open arches in front. The nave cannot be wide, and has chapels between the buttresses, but I did not see the interior. Another church, that of San Gerónimo, is on the same plan, but of later date.[308] The churches of the Renaissance class are numerous and ugly; but Berruguete and his followers hardly perpetrated so many freaks in art here as they did in the centre of Spain; had they been more popular, there had been much less for me to describe. But in truth, rich as this old city still is, it was much richer, two or three noble churches having disappeared at a comparatively late period, either during the war or in subsequent popular disturbances.
The civic buildings are quite worthy of the ancient dignity of the city. The Casa Consistorial, and the Casa de la Disputacion, face each other on opposite sides of the principal square, not far from the cathedral, The former has a modern Pagan front, but on the north side the old work remains. This building is said to have been commenced in A.D. 1369, and finished in A.D. 1378;[309] and inside the great hall I noticed an inscription (which unfortunately I neglected to copy) with the date of 1373. The old front to the north of this building seems worthy of illustration. The enormous arch-stones of the principal doorway are very common throughout Cataluña, and are seen indeed as far east even as Perpiñan. The figure of St. Michael has metal wings; and as the little church dedicated in honour of the same archangel is just on the other side of the Casa, it seems as if there was some special connection between the two buildings. The patio or quadrangle is oblong in plan, and on the first-floor the passage is open to the air, with delicate arches all round. On the east side of this passage a door opens into a noble hall, with a dais for the throne at the upper end, and doorways on each side of the dais. This hall is spanned by four moulded semicircular arches rising from corbels formed of a cluster of shafts. These arches support a flat ceiling of rafters, with boarding between them, resting on corbels in the cross walls. The light is admitted by large cusped circles high up in the side walls, and by good ajimez windows of three lights at the dais end. The rafters of the roof are all painted with coats of arms enclosed within quatrefoils, with a very rich effect. The dimensions of this room are about 40 feet wide by 90 feet long, and 45 feet in height. In a passage near it is an admirable ajimez window, which, as it illustrates this common type very well, is worth preserving a record of. The marble shafts here are only three inches in diameter.[310]
The Casa de la Disputacion was still more interesting; but on my last visit the delicate arcades of its beautiful patio were all being walled up with common brick, leaving narrow slits of windows, which I suppose are to be glazed, to save the degenerate lawyers for the future from any of the chance squalls of wind or rain which their predecessors have endured since the fifteenth century, when Master Pedro Blay, the architect, superintended its erection. This patio is of three stages in height, with a picturesque external staircase to the first floor. The lofty corridor round the first floor leads to the various courts and offices, and in one angle of it is the entrance to the chapel, consisting of three small arches, forming a door and two windows, with the wall above them covered with an elaborate reticulation of tracery. The arches have ogee crocketed canopies, and the side arches iron grilles. This chapel is dedicated to St. George, the tutelar saint of Cataluña, and a figure of the saint rivals that of St. Michael in the Sala Consistorial. There are here some extremely well-managed overhanging passage-ways corbelled out from the walls, and various excellent features of detail. The parapets generally to the various passages are of plain stone slabs, pierced here and there only with a richly traceried circle.
Another old building—the Lonja or Exchange—was built near the sea in A.D. 1383.[311] But everything old has been completely destroyed, with the one exception of its grand hall, which still does service as of old. This consists of three naves, divided by lofty and slender columns, which carry stilted semi-circular arches. The ceiling is flat, of the same description as that of the Sala Consistorial. The dimensions are about 100 feet in length by 75 feet in width.
Another great building, founded soon after, circa 1444, was intended for a cloth-hall:[312] in 1514 it was converted into an armoury, and subsequently into a residence for the Captains-General of Cataluña; it has been completely modernized throughout the exterior, and I did not see the interior.