Carrer de Barcelona, 2
The ancient wall of Mataró – of which a piece can be seen in the Can Xammar square – had seven portals or accesses. The road from Barcelona to Mataró was easily the busiest due to the tight commercial links between the city and the Catalan capital. So the Portal de Barcelona, right where you are now, was also the most monumental of the accesses.
The portal gates opened and closed according to a strict timetable. It is known, however, that some people of Mataró, to be able to go to work on the land whenever they wanted and save the walk to the nearest portal, built underground grottoes beneath the wall.
Considering that the main function of this construction was to defend the city from any danger, it is not surprising that since the seventeenth century, right at this point there has been a chapel dedicated to Saint Sebastian, the city’s protector against the plague.
The first chapel was demolished in the nineteenth century along with the wall, to allow for urban growth. In the same place, however, a new neoclassical chapel was built, which was renovated around 1980.
Today, it is a construction open onto the street, presided by a bronze sculpture of Saint Sebastian on a marble pedestal, the work of the artist Perecoll. The arrows pinned in the human torso remind us of the saint’s martyrdom.
Today, only one memory remains of the former Portal de Barcelona. At the top of the chapel you can see the three shields that presided over it: that of the Crown of Aragon, that of Barcelona and that of Mataró.
