El Mercat de Sant Josep (more commonly known as La Boqueria) and Gran Teatre del Liceu (Barcelona's Opera House) are both located here.

At the bottom, there is the Museu Marítim (naval museum), which chronicles the history of life on the Mediterranean, including a full-scale model of a galley.

The museum is housed in the medieval Drassanes (shipyards), where the ships that made Catalonia a great sea power in the Mediterranean were built.

To the north of the Gothic Quarter lie the Jardins de Fonseré i Mestre which contain modernist buildings housing zoological and geological collections.

The adjacent Parc de la Ciutadella includes both the Parliament of Catalonia and the Barcelona Zoo whose most famous resident was an albino gorilla, Snowflake, who died in 2003 of skin cancer.