The Faculty of Nautical Science is located in Pla de Palau, at the beginning of the Barceloneta district. It is an isolated building with a quadrangular floor plan, consisting of a large ground floor used for services and administration of the centre, two upper floors and a flat rooftop terrace.
Each of the four façades has an entrance with a short flight of steps leading to large porticoes without pediments flanked by Tuscan columns. Above, the two floors have slight differences in volume, but these are not very noticeable, with large openings with balconies in the centre and balconies without overhangs on the sides. Some of the openings on the first floor have an undecorated pediment, while those on the first floor have no openings and a simple segmental arch. The areas without openings are occupied by plain pilasters, with capitals in the centre and fluted pilasters on the sides. The façades are crowned with a prominent eave and a stone balustrade above it. The roof of the building is flat, except for a glass lantern that opens onto the centre of the ground floor. At the ends of the side and rear façades, stone ashlar pilasters protruding from the façade plane rise above the roof balustrade and end with small temples with hemispherical cupolas, delimited by four triangular pediments.
The interior has a free ground floor, generated by a central oval courtyard, illuminated by the large lantern, around which the rooms on the upper floors are organised. From the courtyard, on the south side, the staircase leads to a mezzanine gallery on each floor, which serves as a distribution space for the classrooms; a three-arched gallery with clear Italian echoes leads to the gallery on the first floor. Both on the ground floor and on the staircase there are polychrome leaded stained-glass windows of remarkable artistry. The one that presides over the staircase depicts a caravel with an angel in front of it and bears the date 1932, but not the signature of the artist.
Occupied by anti-fascist militias during the Spanish Civil War, it was later the site of the Escuela de la Marina Mercante del Mediterráneo (Mediterranean Merchant Navy School). Between 1936 and 1939, the school had a training ship attached to it, the President Macià, which was the former Rosa VV yacht of the Count of Godó. Since 1990, it has been part of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), as the Barcelona Nautical Faculty.
