If you have ever visited Barcelona, you likely returned home raving about the city’s stunning architecture. Now along with Barcelona’s grand townhouses, mansions, museums, churches, and historical sites hundreds of late 19th and early 20th century small retail buildings are getting special legal protection from alteration or destruction.

City planners have designated more than 200 cafés, pharmacies, bakeries, clothing shops, and other retail spaces built in Barcelona’s home-grown art nouveau modernista style as off limits to developers. Among the architectural treasures being protected are the famous Els Quatre Gats café, the Pastisseria  Escribà on the Rambla, and the Café de L’Opera in the Bari Gotic.