Plaça Reial

This guide to Plaça Reial in Barcelona traces the square's start after a Capuchin monastery burned down in 1835, and the neoclassical plaza architect Francesc Daniel Molina built through the 1850s. It follows how, in the late 1870s, an unknown young architect named Antoni Gaudí won the commission for the square's ornate streetlamps — one of only two projects he ever completed for the city. Look up at the twin lampposts near the fountain for the snake-and-helmet motif that marks his hand.