Barcelona’s City Council said Wednesday that archaeological work tied to the reurbanization of the Spanish city’s famed La Rambla street uncovered nearly 50 meters of a 14th-century city wall, with a maximum width of 2.90 meters, according to 20 Minutos. The intervention took place in the Santa Mònica sector and was directed by archaeologist Irene Cruz of Global Geomática.
The finds indicated that the wall functioned as a defensive system linked to a moat. At a depth of 3.5 meters, crews identified layers related to ancient floods - accumulations of earth, stones, and ceramics dragged by water - and evidence of the natural dynamics of the stream that once flowed through the area, according to El Punt Avui. On the inner side of the wall, archaeologists documented 16th-century levels reflecting daily life in medieval and early modern Barcelona.
Archaeologists uncovered a pentagonal tower measuring 8.32 by 4.21 meters. They also found the remains of a small donkey buried with a large number of bronze needles. In the southernmost part of the sector, a large semicircular structure of stone and mortar appeared; the City Council said it matched plans from the early 19th-century urbanization of La Rambla and marked the start of the promenade.
The work combined superficial mechanical excavations with manual soundings to study the wall’s foundation, and aimed to fully document the structures and understand how this border space of the medieval city was lived in and transformed. “Very well preserved,” said Cruz, the chief archaeologist of the intervention, adding that the wall had not suffered any modern impacts.
The project began in mid-July with the lifting of the central area of La Rambla. After documenting and covering the first sector, crews planned to open a second stretch of about 50 meters over the following two months, bringing the total documented length along La Rambla to nearly 100 meters.
“We went to look for this wall expressly,” said Josep Pujadas, the head of the Archaeology Service of Barcelona. He said the wall would be covered again after exhaustive documentation.
The latest excavations confirmed that the wall was built in the mid-14th century and remained in use for a few decades until the Raval wall went up at the end of the same century.
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