Construction work started on 25 March 1329, when the foundation stone was laid by king Alfonso IV of Aragon as commemorated by a tablet in Latin and Catalan on the façade that faces the Fossar de les Moreres.

The architects in charge were Berenguer de Montagut (designer of the building) and Ramon Despuig, and during the construction all the guilds of the Ribera quarter were involved.

[3][4] Many of its decorative richness, the images and the Baroque altar were destroyed in a fire set by anti-clerical rioters at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936.

The simple ribbed vault is supported on slender octagonal columns, and abundant daylight streams in through the tall clerestorey windows.

The interior is almost devoid of imagery of the sort to be found in Barcelona's other large Gothic churches, the cathedral and Santa Maria del Pi, after the fire which occurred in 1936 during anticlerical disturbances.

[7] According to the art historian Josep Bracons,[8] the basic unit of measurement used in Santa Maria del Mar was the mediaeval foot of 33 centimetres.