Guide to visit the MUHBA

MUHBA’s locations are spread throughout Barcelona, situated in places significant to the city’s history. Many of the most important sites are in the Gothic Quarter, where the Romans founded Barcino. Here are some of the key sites to visit:

MUHBA Plaça del Rei and Casa Padellàs

Though originally set up in Casa Padellàs, the museum’s main headquarters is now across from it in Plaça del Rei. These two sites are some of the museum’s most popular and are recommended to be visited together.
Casa Padellàs has four floors: an open space where visitors can get information about the city and current events, two intermediate floors with temporary exhibits about various parts of the city over the centuries, and the top floor, which serves as a center for research, documentation, and debate.
Across the square, the main building at Plaça del Rei, founded in 1943, houses 4,000 square meters of archaeological remains from Barcino and medieval Barcelona. Visitors can see artifacts such as ceramics, stones, glass, and sculptures from the Neolithic to the 13th century.

MUHBA Temple d’August

Just a two-minute walk from Plaça del Rei is the Temple of Augustus. This ancient Roman site is housed within a building that used to be a Roman temple dedicated to Emperor Augustus, built in the 1st century BC.
Originally, this 2,000-year-old temple stood 37 meters high and 17 meters wide. Many parts collapsed over the centuries, and the columns were only rediscovered in the 19th century during construction for the Catalonia Excursionist Center.

MUHBA El Call

Close to the Temple of Augustus is El Call, the former Jewish quarter, home to a MUHBA site dedicated to the city’s Jewish community history.
The Jewish quarter existed from the 7th to the 14th century. In the 12th century, with the arrival of Jews expelled from France, Barcelona’s Jewish population grew to 15%, leading to the creation of Call Menor, adjacent to the original Call Major. Common professions in the Jewish community included medicine, science, trade, and aristocratic money-lending. However, due to the Black Plague, anti-Semitic violence in the late 14th century, and the Spanish Inquisition, the Jewish population declined dramatically by the 15th century.
The museum exhibits Jewish cultural artifacts found in the quarter, such as ritual lamps and dishes with Hebrew characters. It also explains the community’s history, decline, neighborhood layout, and the Jewish cultural legacy in Barcelona.

MUHBA Via Sepulcral Romana

About an eight-minute walk from El Call is the Villa de Madrid, a square with a Roman necropolis from the 1st to 3rd centuries, visible below ground level. This site is considered the most significant burial ground in Barcino, with over 70 tombs in their original context.
The necropolis was discovered in 1956 during construction in the southeast of the square. Further excavations over the years revealed more of the site, which opened as an outdoor museum in 2008.