Calatrava’s Bac de Roda and the bridge of Carrer del Bisbe: Barcelona’s bridges, the back story

About Calatrava’s Bac de Roda and the bridge of Carrer del Bisbe: Barcelona’s bridges, the back story

By the ULTIMATE Barcelona Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

Barcelona is not a city of rivers, but it has two bridges worth seeking out: the carved stone bridge over Carrer del Bisbe in the Gothic Quarter, and the white steel arches of Bac de Roda, the first bridge Santiago Calatrava designed.

The bridge over Carrer del Bisbe

In the Gothic Quarter, a carved stone bridge crosses Carrer del Bisbe between the Palau de la Generalitat and the Casa dels Canonges. It looks medieval, but it was built in 1928, in the neo-Gothic style, by the architect Joan Rubió i Bellver. Look up at its pinnacles and lacework of stone; it is one of the most photographed corners of the old city.

Bac de Roda

In the 1980s, as Barcelona prepared for the 1992 Olympic Games, the city set out to give its outer neighbourhoods monuments of their own. One of the results was the Pont de Bac de Roda, approved in 1985 and opened on 27 September 1987, during the festes de la Mercè. It was the first bridge designed by the Valencian architect and engineer Santiago Calatrava.

The most photographed ‘Gothic’ bridge in Barcelona was built in 1928.

The bridge carries the street over the railway lines between the districts of Sant Andreu and Sant Martí, 128 metres long with a 45-metre span, on white steel arches either side of the roadway. It became one of the emblems of the new Barcelona, and the first of the bridges that made Calatrava famous around the world.

Our advice: see the Bisbe bridge early in the morning, before the crowds; visit Bac de Roda in the late afternoon, when the low sun catches the white arches.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Calatrava’s Bac de Roda and the bridge of Carrer del Bisbe: Barcelona’s bridges, the back story before you go.