Calle del Marquès de Campo Sagrado, in the Sant Antoni neighborhood, differs in its dimensions from the standards of the Eixample layout in this area. While the rest of the streets are 20 meters wide, the Marquès de Campo Sagrado street is 10 meters wider. Because? We must go back to Pla Cerdà and the urban planning of the early 20th century. This street measures 30 meters because it had to connect with an avenue called Via C that would cross the entire Ciutat Vella and connect at the opposite end with Buenaventura Muñoz.
Via C was never completed in its entirety, but some vestiges remain, in addition to the exceptional breadth of Marquès de Campo Sagrado. After the Civil War, and thanks in part to the effects of the fascist bombings on the center of Barcelona, ??the Cathedral Avenue and Francesc Cambó Avenue were opened, which were part of Via C. Their width gives an idea of ??which one was to be the impact of this transversal axis that was to cross the historic city.
This large avenue was part of a set of three axes, planned by Cerdà, that would cross what is now the Ciutat Vella district to facilitate the connection of the new Eixample with the port area and, in the process, to clean up and sanitize the dense old neighborhoods. Of the three, only the so-called Via A, the current Via Laietana, was completed. It was planned as the extension of Pau Claris and even today it is one of the main arteries, along with the Rambla, that connect the Eixample with the seafront of the city.
Another axis, Via B, ran parallel to Via Laietana, but in this case it had to follow the Muntaner extension. When the three-axis project was reconsidered at the beginning of the 20th century, its layout was changed, moving from Plaza Universitat to the port area. Via B can be partially followed today along Drassanes Avenue and Rambla del Raval.
The opening of Via Laietana alone meant the disappearance of 270 buildings, some of them important elements of medieval heritage. Only a few were saved, and they were rebuilt stone by stone in other places, such as Casa Padellàs, originally on Mercaders Street and which is currently the headquarters of the Barcelona History Museum, next to Plaza del Rei. . This volume gives an idea of ??the impact that the opening of Via C would have had.
