A giant blackboard

Journal of a gadabout (5). by  Dr. A. Remesar

Barcelona.

The Via Augusta was the great Roman road through the Iberian peninsula, from the Pyrenees to Cadiz. Its route passed behind Collserola and did not reach Barcelona. During the Carolingian Empire was drawn a variant of the Via Augusta, the Francisca way, coming through the Besòs’s valley, crossed the plain of Barcelona and returned to find the Augusta route through the Llobregat’s . The persistence of this way, right on the edge between the Barcelona plain and the first foothills, corresponds to the current layout of the Travesera de Gràcia.

There, in the old town of San Gervasio, the order of the Sisters of Jesus, known as the Black Ladies, built one of their schools that eventually passed into the hands of the Jesuits. In 2008, were made several improvement works and the construction of a sports hall. The architect Guillermo Bañares solved the plane of the facade of the new building by means of a black metal closure, a blackboard.

Jaime Cordoba, artist and professor of the Department of Arts & Conservation Restoration at the University of Barcelona, made a public art intervention with children’s chalk motives. Among them wrote the motto of the founder of the Order of the Sisters of Jesus, Nicolas Barre, “To distinguish well the fruit, to preserve it, leading it to perfect maturity”

Is the world’s largest blackboard ?. May be. And it’s not virtual.

A good place to visit if you travel to Barcelona