The first documentary reference we find to the church of Santa Maria del Mar is in a text from the year 998.
This basilica is the work of the architect Berenguer de Montagut, and the first stone was laid to commemorate the conquest of Sardinia, which completed the Catalan domination in the Mediterranean initiated ten years earlier with the conquest of Mallorca, and which reached its fullest extent with the entry of Sicily and Greece into the domains of the House of Barcelona. Source: bcn