Documentant l'arqueologia: la casa de Massot Avengenà a l'alfòndec del call Major de Barcelona (carrer de Sant Honorat, núm. 3)

Abstract

Documenting archaeology: Massot Avengenà?s house in the corn exchange in Barcelona?s call Major (number 3, Carrer de Sant Honorat). The article outlines the historical and artistic study carried out in 2009 on the medieval remains found at the archaeological site in the subsoil of number 3, Carrer Sant Honorat in Barcelona, where the Government of Catalonia?s Presidential Office is currently located. This exceptional site?s most important stratigraphies (alongside those from the late Roman period) correspond to a house/palace located in the corn exchange in Barcelona?s call Major (the largest section of the city?s medieval Jewish quarter). A significant portion of the building?s foundations have been preserved, along with a number of large silos constructed in the mid-13th century.
The information obtained through archaeological work and the existing bibliography and partially unpublished archive documents have made it possible to reconstruct the history of the property between the 14th and 19th centuries, particularly during a key period in the city?s past, encompassing the pogrom of 1391, the disappearance of Barcelona?s aljama (a Spanish term of Arabic origin used in old official documents to designate self-governing communities of Moors and Jews living under Spanish rule) and the settling of the urban Christian elite in the old Jewish quarter. During this period, the house ceased to belong to the financier Massot Avengenà, its last Jewish owner, and became the property of the jurist Pere de Rajadell, its first Christian resident.