CATHEDRAL, Cloister

Passing through the Romanesque door of St. Severus in white marble, you'll find yourself in the cloister: an oasis of tranquility surrounded by 14th and 15th-century Gothic galleries. This cloister is almost as big as the Cathedral itself and has a beautiful garden with tall palm trees and magnolias, but its main attraction is the unmistakable white geese. If you try to count them, you'll reach the number 13, which is how old St. Eulalia was when she was martyred and was also the number of different kinds of torture she suffered before death.

The geese are treated very well, in fact they have their own pond with a fifteenth-century fountain surmounted by the statue of St. George on horseback! This fountain is completely decorated with flowers for the Feast of Corpus Christi, when an empty eggshell is kept in balance on its jet of water as a symbol of the consecrated host. The tradition of "ou com balla", meaning the "dance of the egg", dates back to the 1700s....