Can Balaguer, the medieval house

Scheduled visits

Did you know that in medieval times the Riera flowed through Born and Unió Street? Well, yes, but at the beginning of the 17th century it was diverted to the current Passeig de Mallorca and its course was taken over by some of the city’s most important streets. At the end of that century, in 1699, Mateu Gual-Sanglada commissioned the construction of the baroque building that we can visit today, with an entrance on one of these new streets.

In fact, Can Balaguer is half a house. The other half was made up of the “old houses,” as the documents call them, which were left out of the 1699 project. These medieval houses had an entrance on Sant Jaume Street and, in the 19th century, were separated from the baroque building. Today they are the headquarters of a private foundation. But within the property that the Balaguer brothers acquired in 1927, on the other side of the building, a small part of one of the original houses was preserved.

During the restoration, completed in 2016, 14th-century paintings were found on the walls of this space, which has recently been turned into a museum. This is the Medieval Room of Can Balaguer, where we invite you to begin your journey through the property’s most distant past.

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