Data collection of Catholic parish churches of Barcelona

Churches are highly characteristic buildings found in all towns and cities with a Western Catholic tradition. There are many famous ones, such as Duomo di Milano, Cathédrale Notre-Dame in Paris, or La Sagrada Família in Barcelona. It is precisely Barcelona that is the focus of this data collection. For the first time, the architectural floor plans of the city's 132 Catholic parish churches are compared side by side. The collection of this data aims to showcase the architectural characterization of these 132 unique buildings.Through archival research and on-site visits to all the churches, the floor plans are drawn using AutoCAD and Photoshop software and placed side by side at the same scale.Here they have been grouped according to their architectural characterization: 1) churches with a directional spatial structure (including subgroups such as single nave, single nave with chapels, two naves, three naves, three naves with chapels, and five naves - including basilica and Latin cross floor plans); 2) churches with an expansive spatial structure (including subgroups such as single nave, three naves, and Greek cross floor plans); 3) churches with a radial spatial structure.These data show that there are many churches with a directional spatial structure (96 out of 132). They range from the simplest ones distributed in a single nave to those with two, three, or five naves -including those with additional side chapels-. The most common type is the single-nave church, and except for Sant Pacià (1876-81), all of them were constructed during the 20th century. There are also numerous single-nave churches with side chapels -among which only one is a recent construction, Sant Cristòfol (2000)- and three-nave churches -where only one appears, Santa Cecília (1963), from the post-conciliar period-. We also see that there is a single church with five naves, the unfinished basilica of the Sagrada Família (under construction since 1882), and one church with two naves, Sant Llorenç (1954-1963).Regarding the churches grouped within the category of expansive churches, there are both older ones that follow a Greek cross layout and more recent ones designed following rectangular geometries. These latter ones, although fewer in number and less diverse in terms of floor plan, offer a much wider variety of section arrangements than the directional churches. Finally, fourteen parish churches are organized following a radial scheme. They range from a square diagonally distributed or a rectangle divided between two triangular geometries -shapes easily adaptable to the city's urban layout- to a standalone and isolated ellipse, as well as temples with hexagonal, triangular, and conical forms.In addition to the many other classifications that can be made, the methodology used for collecting the data is a great example that can be extrapolated to other investigations of buildings in other cities, even beyond whether they are religious buildings or not.THIS DATASET IS ARCHIVED AT DANS/EASY, BUT NOT ACCESSIBLE HERE. TO VIEW A LIST OF FILES AND ACCESS THE FILES IN THIS DATASET CLICK ON THE DOI-LINK ABOV