Basílica de Santa Maria del Mar

This guide to Santa Maria del Mar in Barcelona opens with the 1936 fire that anarchists set inside the church, burning for eleven days and stripping away its altar and stained glass. It traces back to the building's construction between 1329 and 1383 by the bastaixos, the neighborhood's dockworkers, who hauled every stone from the Montjuïc quarries on their own backs. Look for their carved likenesses on the doors, and for the church's uniquely wide Gothic column spans.