The first documentary reference we find to the church of Santa Maria del Mar is in a text from the year 998. This basilica is the work of the architect Berenguer de Montagut, and the first stone was laid to commemorate the conquest of Sardinia, which completed the Catalan domination in the Mediterranean initiated ten years earlier with the conquest of Mallorca, and which reached its fullest extent with the entry of Sicily and Greece into the domains of the House of Barcelona.
Externally, it is the only perfectly-finished Catalan Gothic church. Its outer walls display the features which differentiate Catalan Gothic from European.
In the Catalan style, there is a predominance of horizontal lines, of solid panels over empty spaces, of flat terraces without roofs, and a preference for large bare surfaces. The buttresses are swithout flying buttresses as in the European Gothic cathedrals, and the towers are octagonal and flat-topped.
The interior of the church is of an extraordinary beauty and has exceptional acoustic conditions that make it an ideal space for concerts, usually of classical and Oriental music but occasionally of jazz.