Facultat de Geografia i Història - Universitat de Barcelona

The year is 2006, and moving trucks are rolling down this narrow medieval street as an entire university faculty relocates from the suburbs back to the heart of Barcelona's old city. You're standing before the newest home of the Faculty of Geography and History, a sleek modern building that arrived on Carrer de Montalegre just nineteen years ago, yet sits atop archaeological layers that stretch back eight centuries. This glass and concrete structure replaced the faculty's suburban exile that lasted thirty-one years. But here's what most visitors miss... beneath your feet, students have been excavating since 2014 in their own archaeological practice area, literally digging into the medieval foundations of the old Montalegre monastery that once dominated this street. The university made a special agreement with Barcelona City Council, turning the building's basement into a hands-on classroom where future archaeologists uncover pottery shards and ancient walls from the 13th century. Step inside and you'll find the Main Hall, designed to seat exactly 140 people, where heated academic debates echo off walls that house one of Barcelona's most unusual pipe organs, built in 1965. This building represents something extraordinary... a modern faculty literally built on top of history, where students study the past while standing on the very ruins they're learning to excavate.