La Boqueria Market

Mercat de la Boqueria traces informal roots back to at least 1217, when traders began setting up meat tables outside the city's old gates on this exact site, though the market didn't gain formal legal recognition until 1826 and wasn't given its own purpose-built structure until 1840, after fire had destroyed the convent that previously stood here. The name "Boqueria" itself comes from the Catalan word for goat, reflecting its earliest medieval trade in goat meat, long before it became the broad food market it is today.

Today it holds over 300 stalls under a distinctive stained-glass and wrought-iron Modernista roof (added decades after the main structure, in the early 20th century), selling everything from whole legs of jamón ibérico and enormous displays of fresh Mediterranean seafood on ice to towering fruit-juice stalls, cheese counters, spice merchants and small tapas bars tucked among the produce stands where you can eat standing at the counter.