The Església de Sant Felip Neri is a Baroque church tucked away in a small, romantic square in the Gothic Quarter. Its austere façade, scarred by shrapnel from the Spanish Civil War, quietly bears witness to history and memory. Beneath a semicircular pediment presided over by the saint, a nave opens out with a transept and rectangular apse. In the side chapels, neoclassical altars and paintings by the modernist Joan Llimona engage in dialogue with the scars of the past. Here, art and tragedy meet in one of the city’s most poignant corners.
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The scars in the stone are not merely decorative: they stand as a stark testament to a bombing that shattered both peace and masonry in 1938. At that moment, a bomb struck directly above the convent’s underground shelter, where many children were taking refuge.
Today, the square surrounds the church in calm and shade – a sanctuary where beauty and wounds coexist peacefully.
