(Warning: long read ahead! But lots of pictures, too, so just read what you like.)
When I was in Barcelona back in February for a weekend Sigur Rós concert, I ended up spending most of my time in the city hunting down homes and churches designed by the famous Spanish architect
Antoni Gaudí (pronounced “uhn-TOH-nee guh-oo-DEE” [ənˈtɔ.ni ɣəwˈði]). Born and raised in the Cataluña region of which Barcelona is the capital, Gaudi was associated with the
Modernisme or Art Nouveau movement and worked in Spain in the 19th and 20th centuries. The buildings he planned are as much
a symbol of the city of Barcelona as Frank Lloyd Wright’s are of Chicago.
Gaudí was fascinated by
the natural world and by
geometry, two fields of study that greatly influenced his design philosophy. Flowing, organic forms appear all over his buildings, and scary math terms like paraboloids, hyperboloids, and helicoids create arches and ceilings that are at once elegant and very structurally strong. Instead of making traditional blueprints, Gaudí devised a complex set of hanging chains that he attached to a ceiling to figure out the design for many of his religious commissions like the still-unfinished Sagrada Família or never-finished Colònia Güell. These
catenary curves (from the Latin word for “chain,”
catena) represent the shape that chains take when suspended and allowed to droop down naturally under gravity’s force. (See the picture below under #6.) Looking in a mirror on the floor, Gaudí would then make his plans for a building.
This unique combination of natural elements and geometric forms—a fusion of biology and mathematics—is what attracts me so much to his architecture. His early works, which are creative and original takes on the Gothic- and Mudéjar-revival styles of his day, are also interesting, but his later commissions are simply fascinating because they’re just so
different from conventional design.
Below are
seven sites you can go in Barcelona to see and touch the architecture of Antoni Gaudí. I’ve listed them in order of worth-seeing, so if you’re short on time, just hit up the Sagrada Família, Casa Batlló, and Park Güell, but if you’re a nerd like me, go to ALL the places. Just keep in mind that most of them have admission prices of around 10-15 €, each, but seeing them is so worth it.
1) Sagrada Família
Unquestionably
Gaudí’s masterpiece, the Sagrada Família is a Catholic basilica that takes up a whole city block in Barcelona’s Eixample district, the new part of town where the streets run on a great grid. The church is arguably
Spain’s most significant and beautiful piece of architecture (vying with the Alhambra, a Moorish palatial complex to the south in Granada). And it is without a doubt
an iconic symbol of Barcelona, much as the Golden Gate Bridge represents San Francisco or the Cristo Redentor statue does for Rio de Janeiro.
Many people assume the Sagrada Família is the city’s cathedral, but it’s actually a
minor basilica.
Barcelona’s Gothic-style cathedral can be found in the old town, where it has stood for the past half-dozen centuries. (Side-note: a cathedral is home to a bishop or archbishop, referring to the
cathedra or seat that represents their authority.)
The Sagrada Família is instead a basilica, a significant and important church that has been granted special privileges. Pope Benedict XVI gave the church
said status when he consecrated it in 2010. The church is dedicated to the
Sagrada Família, Catalan for the “Holy Family” of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus.
Although in its third year as a fully-functioning church (now that the naves have been completely roofed-over),
the Sagrada Família is still in a work in progress. I think this makes visiting it
now, before it’s finished mid-century, so interesting, because it gives us a feel for what the Middle Ages would have been like when all the great Gothic cathedrals were erected. It often took centuries for such monumental works to be completed, and the Sagrada Família will be no different. I would love to come back to Barcelona in a few decades when all the bell towers have been raised; it’s going to be unbelievably beautiful.
Construction began on the church in 1882 and Gaudí became its architect the next year. Initially, he had planned to do a Gothic Revival-style church (see, for example, the crypt and the apse) but a few sketches later and the church had been transformed into something never before seen in Western architecture. He went all-in with his avant-garde architectural ideas, making the stonework on the Nativity Façade look like oozing slime and the main pillars inside the nave branch out like trees. He also took advantage of geometric calculations with hyperboloids (no idea what those are!) and, with his fractal-like columns, was able to construct
a massive, soaring, weight-bearing space without the use of Gothic flying buttresses.
The exterior of the church is alive with a myriad of statues, sculptures, and statements. On the Passion Façade, Star Wars stormtrooper-looking
Roman soldiers lead a chiseled Jesus to Calvary, four root-like
pillars reach down at dramatic angles, and the entrance door is covered in selections from the gospels in Catalan. Some phrases on the door are illuminated in gold/bronze, like
Jesus de Natzaret, Rei dels Jueus (“Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”) and
i què és la veritat? (“and what is truth?” — Pontius Pilate). Some of the lower pointy towers
are capped with what looks like raspberries and Skittles, and the taller bell towers are inscribed with words like
Oració (“prayer”) and
Credo (“I believe”).
The interior is, excuse the cliché, a riot of colors—you can find bright reds, blues, and greens in the many stained glass windows as well as in the bug-eye looking pillar capitals that represent the four Evangelists. Light pours in from the western wall, the many large windows, and skylights in the above. And the ceiling supported by the branching pillars makes you feel like you’re inside a pink springtime forest, or beneath a sky of exploding fireworks, or in
a fantasy undersea world of coral, sea anemones, and kelp.
Come to get the chills, to appreciate a revolutionary architecture, to pray. It’s one of the coolest places you can visit in Barcelona, or anywhere in Spain.
How to get there: The Sagrada Família can be found at the block formed by C/ Provença, Marina, Mallorca, and Sardenya (Eixample district). Take the L5 (blue line) on the Metro and get off at the Sagrada Família stop.
2) Casa Batlló aka “Casa dels Ossos” (House of Bones)
Pronounced “buh-YO” [bəʎˈʎo], Casa Batlló was my favorite of the Gaudí residences I got to visit in Barcelona. A wealthy textile industrialist named Josep Batlló had purchased Passeig de Gràcia Nº 43 but was unhappy with the house’s design and commissioned Gaudí to do something about it in 1904. By 1906, the architect had completely remodeled the townhouse in his signature style.
The front
façade offers a way to appreciate Gaudí-style buildings
gratis. From a distance, the house appears a rather drab *ahem*
bone-gray, but upon closer inspection, faint bacterial colonies of red, green, purple, and blue tiles (see the tidbit about
trencadís below in #3) emerge that bring the façade to life even as the weird balconies and windowpanes whisper a subliminal message about skeletons.
Whenever people mention Casa Batlló—the “House of Bones”—they always mention that Gaudí basically tried to avoid incorporating any rigid, straight lines. Maybe, but perhaps this is just what happens when you draw all your inspiration from the sea and underwater life?
I don’t think the architect purposefully omitted straight lines and right angles, but merely copied the organic, smooth forms found in nature.
From the very entrance you get the
impression you’re under the sea: the foyer walls are decorated in scale- or bubble-like patterns and a groovy banister looks like the “lips” of a giant clam. Above, on the so-called Noble Floor, you’re led into a large drawing room with
a toothed ceiling lamp made to look like either a whirlpool or a nautilus shell, and the vast street-facing window is decorated with blue and pink
stained glass circles—or should I say sand-dollars, sea urchins, and plankton? My tour through the house put me in a calm, relaxed mood, just as tidewaters can have a healing, soothing effect.
The audioguide pointed out an ingenious feature of the house’s
lightwell, or inner patio/gap that brings light to inward rooms. To ensure an
even distribution of light at the upper and lower floors, he graded the tiles so that darker, light-absorbing blues float above and paler, light-reflecting blues dominate below. Gill-shaped windows are narrow on the top floor and gradually expand to take in more air the farther down you go.
The roof is, like all Gaudí houses, pretty cool, but the
attic is equally fascinating. You walk through a colonnade formed by dozens of white, plaster
upside-down catenary curves (think St. Louis, Mo., Gateway Arch). 1960s-like in their pale minimalism, you begin to wonder if you’re slipping past the ribs of a sardine skeleton. Emerging from the
ethereal tidal pool, you walk out onto a clean, spacious
terrace. The architect grouped the house’s many chimneys into four clusters, but the
chimneys look less like sooty smokestacks than deepsea tube worms, or frozen-in-time backup dancers swaying to rhythms, rhythms that could be the regular crashing of waves or the coming and going of the tides.
And capping it all is a sharp mound, festooned with lumpy blue and brown
scales shingles and bookended by a cross-bearing turret. You might say it resembles a coelacanth, the body of a coastal bird, or even
a dragon. Gaudí was a very devout Catholic, and the patron saint of Cataluña is St. George (
Sant Jordi). Since St. George, according to legend, slew a dragon and saved a damsel, it’s thought that Gaudí inserted this regional symbol right onto the house: the ridged spine of the lizard drapes over the façade while the gleaming white cross-topped tower represents the piercing spear of St. George.
How to get there: Casa Batlló is house Nº 43 on the west side of the Passeig de Gràcia (Eixample district). Take the L2 (purple line), L3 (green line), or L4 (yellow line) on the Metro and get off at the Passeig de Gràcia stop.
3) Park Güell
First, a little background on who this Güell guy was (pronounced “GWAY-ee” [gweʎ]), since he shows up in two more places below. Eusebi Güell made a fortune in the textile business as the Spanish region of Cataluña rapidly industrialized in the late 19th century. Early on in Gaudí’s life, the two met and
Güell became one of the architect’s biggest patrons. Between 1900 and 1914, work was done on an idealized subdivision for the wealthy on land purchased by Güell, but because few of the upper class at the time cared for Gaudí’s style and/or Modernisme, and the project was halted. Still, both Güell and Gaudí ended up living in two of the handful of houses built in the park, none by Gaudí himself, though.
(There seems to be a lot of confusion about how to spell this neighborhood-turned-city park. Güell was inspired by England’s
Garden City movement, or utopian urban planning that emphasized parks and green space, and so spelled it
Park Güell instead of the Catalan
parc or the Spanish
parque.)
Across the *ahem* park, he decorated buildings and structures with a technique he popularized called
trencadís. Taking shards and pieces of broken ceramic tiles, plates, etc., he arranged them in such a way to create flowing mosaics and shapes, covering walls, ceilings, benches, and statues with these imperfect tiles. The most beloved piece he created is
el drac, “the dragon” or lizard that’s crawling down toward the entrance to Park Güell, covered in fun blue, orange, and green tiles.
Main sights include: the two unassuming
pavilions at the southern entrance; the
Sala Hipóstila—it looks like a wavy Greek temple with a forest of columns and has
the world’s longest bench on its roof; vaulted, colonnaded
paths made from local stone that swoop into hillsides; and a megalithic mini
Calvary with three crosses on its summit which offers a
commanding view of the whole city. There’s a lot to be said for simply strolling around the grounds and enjoying the mix of deciduous and palm trees, a welcome break from the city air. As you wander, try to imagine what the currently-empty estate was supposed to look like: luxury homes set on roomy lots, all surrounded by lush, shady vegetation.
How to get there: Park Güell is located up a hill to the northeast of the Gràcia district. Take the L3 (green line) on the Metro and get off at either the Lesseps or Vallcarca stops. If you get off at Lesseps, head east on Travessera de Dalt for a few minutes until you see escalators that will carry you north up the hill and leave you near the main southern entrance. If you get off at Vallcarca, head due east until you run into escalators that will take you east up the hill and drop you off at the western gate.
4) Casa Milà aka “La Pedrera” (The Quarry)
Between 1906 and 1912, Gaudí worked on the most distinctive apartment block on the Passeig de Gràcia, a lovely, wide north-south avenue spanning the Eixample or modern “expansion” of the city. At the request of the industrialist Pere Milà, he created a structure that is actually two separate apartments joined by two oblong patios and an other-worldly terrace with a wavy floor and weird chimneys. It’s officially called
Casa Milà, Catalan for “the Milà House,” but informally everyone calls it
La Pedrera because it looks like an open-face rock
“quarry.” Part of the reason the wavy façade is so dramatic has to do with the street grid system that covers the Eixample; at every intersection the corners are cut off like those desktop calendars with triangular pockets, so each street crossing is actually a little plaza and feels open and accessible.
La Pedrera houses a restored family
apartment that you can stroll through wistfully and get a taste for what
turn-of-the-century bourgeois Barcelona would have been like, a time of hopeful innocence before the tragic events of the twentieth century. Up in the attic there’s a small museum that educates you on Gaudí, his architectural style, and his building methods.
The real draw to Casa Milà is the roof and its terrace. The ceiling of the complex’s
attic undulates like a sine curve, and the rooftop is no different. Stairs and ramps move you up and down and offer lovely views of the Passeig de Gràcia and the rest of the city. Instead of seeing chimneys as something to grudgingly put up with, Gaudí eagerly incorporated them into his design, capping them with
surreal, face-like tops that look like helmet-clad stormtroopers or Pacific Islander totems. Frozen-yogurt ice cream cones tempt you to stay long as
stoic guardians keep vigil, but ultimately the whirling, spiraling patios will draw you back down to street level.
How to get there: Casa Milà sits on the northeast corner of the intersection formed by the Passeig de Gràcia and C/ Provença (Eixample district). Take the L3 (green line) or L5 (blue line) on the Metro and get off at the Diagonal stop.
5) Palau Güell
The only Gaudí work in the old city, Palau Güell (“Güell Mansion”) fits in with the historic feel of the neighborhood and reflects Gaudí’s budding creativity. Owned by the same Güell as #3 and #6, but designed by a younger Gaudí, it was his first commission for the textile magnate. Although the Catalan word
palau is best translated as “mansion,” its cognate, “palace,” could just as easily be used to describe this *ahem* palatial home.
Residents and guests would enter from the street under one of two eye-like parabolic arches decorated in intricate ironwork. Once inside, their horses would be led down to the subterranean
stable, which, despite its lowly function, reflects the elegant arches and vaulting Gaudí would later use in the Sagrada Família.
The living quarters are cozy but not gloomy, warm but not gaudy, made of stone but not cold, and solid without being cave-like. The smooth, finished stone from the exterior continues inside—a simple, sophisticated skeleton that was fleshed out with rugs, lamps, and furniture. The whole house centers around the
main living area that was used for welcoming guests. This space was used both for entertaining and for praying; a brilliant, gilded
chapel is balanced by a powerful
organ whose notes fill the dome-capped hall.
Although Palau Güell isn’t as obviously-Gaudí as his later works, you can still see his nascent style coming to life: he flirted with Moorish elements by installing a
golden ceiling and
bathroom tiles that look more at home at Sevilla’s Real Alcázar than a Barcelona palace; he put slender, yawning parabolas everywhere, from windows to arches; and he incorporated natural elements by forging vines, seed hulls, and even a phoenix out of iron.
As with Casa Batlló and La Pedrera, Palau Güell also has a surprise on its roof. Although the
chimneys are evenly distributed around the perimeter, they’re just as whimsical and fun as those on his other two works in the new part of town. Decorated with tightly-arranged
trencadís mosaics, the chimneys look like anything from
rainbow frozen yogurt and
bulbous Christmas trees to
zebra skin and
goblin faces. If you look hard enough to the east, you can catch glimpses of the simple-yet-beautiful octagonal belltowers on the Catalan churches of Sta. Mª del Mar and Sta. Mª del Pi in the distance.
How to get there: Palau Güell is house Nº 3-5 on C/ Nou de la Rambla in the Ciutat Vella (old town) of Barcelona. If you take the L3 (green line) on the Metro, you can get off at one of two Las Ramblas stops: Liceu to the north and Drassanes to the south. C/ Nou de la Rambla is directly opposite Plaça Reial on the other side of La Rambla dels Caputxins.
6) The Crypt-Church of Colònia Güell
Yep, another building commissioned by Sr. Güell! This time, though, we leave crowded Barcelona for a quiet village on the outskirts of the Barcelona area, Santa Coloma de Cervelló. It was here that Eusebi Güell moved his textile operations at the turn of the century, establishing an industrial estate to be run by the business on behalf of his employees. Called
Colònia Güell, this
company town stood out from its contemporaries because Güell actually tried to improve his workers’ lives instead of focusing on profits-profits-profits; e.g., he sponsored the construction of Mondernista-style homes as well as a parish church for the “colony.” After years of analysis and experimentation, Gaudí began work on the construction of this church in 1908 but was forced to leave it unfinished after funding ran out in 1914.
Only the crypt-like lower nave had been completed at this point, even though there were plans for a soaring upper nave as well. The next year, the fully-finished lower nave was blessed by Barcelona’s bishop and the upper floor bricked over. This lower floor has functioned as a church ever since.
Outside, you get the feeling that a giant brick- and mosaic-clad daddy-longlegs has emerged from the earth. But inside, you’re welcomed into an
intimate, earthy space. When I visited, I was really surprised how tiny the interior of the church was; pictures I had seen made it appear like a gargantuan, roofed-over outside auditorium. Instead, it was a small, warm circular nave held up by leaning
tree trunks stone pillars and bricked
vaulting. Goodies within include whimsical
stained-glass windows, a giant clamshell repurposed as a
holy water font, and ergonomic
pews designed by Gaudí himself.
It’s a real shame Güell ran out of money for the project, because the church
would have been a surreal work of true beauty: a spaceship-like beehive of a complex with rockets and towers and spirals and light. At the very least, the crypt-church let Gaudí warm up for his later work on the Sagrada Família; he perfected his hanging-chains method in which he looked at a mirror on the floor and saw the “blueprints”
right-side up and he got to try out his complex geometric arches.
How to get there: The church is in a suburb of Barcelona called Santa Coloma de Cervelló. I entered the underground system in Barcelona’s Plaça de Espanya and headed to the FGC regional train line (orange square & white chain logo). At one of the machines, I bought a combined admission + round-trip ticket. Any train marked S4, S8, or S33 will drop you off at the Colònia Güell station, and there are little spray-painted footprints that will lead you straight to the church, which is on C/ Claudi Güell.
7) Casa Vicens
This little-touristed house is visited by none but the most dedicated Gaudí fans (i.e., yours truly), so when I managed to turn onto C/ Carolines during a sunny Barcelona siesta, I ran into only a handful of Asian and European travelers, some toting guidebooks and others cameras. I lingered for a few minutes, snapped some pictures, and headed back down a major street to get some
croquetas for lunch. Casa Vicens is—surprise, surprise—still a private home, and so tourists have to be content to admire its architecture from behind iron grillework. Finished in 1889 at the request of Manuel Vicens, a man in the brick and tile business, the house has subtle nods to Vicens’ industry: warm, red bricking and happy white-and-green tiles that give the fortress-like house a pixelated look.
As
Gaudí’s first work, his trademark style isn’t clearly evident yet here, but
Moorish elements abound without falling into the exoticist trap of Revivalism: you can catch hints of the Alhambra in the arches and columns, and the overhanging roofs are reminiscent of the flourishes found over entrances to Moroccan homes. And seashell/palm fronds populate the iron gate to the property, reminding us of Gaudí’s lifelong fascination with the
shapes of nature.
Currently it’s up
for sale—to the tune of 30.000.000 €. Yes, that’s
thirty million euros. Think of it less as a piece of property, though, and more as a work of art, especially since Gaudí designed everything from the doors to the toilet seats (probably). It’s still on the market, and I wonder if some philanthropic business or foundation might take it over, clean it up, and re-open it to visitors as the next Casa Batlló, La Pedrera, or Palau Güell. Or maybe it will escape becoming a museum for a few generations, remaining just as the architect intended it to be—
a home.
How to get there: Casa Vicens is house Nº 24 on C/ Carolines (Gràcia district). Take the L3 (green line) on the Metro and get off at the Fontana stop. Head north on C/ Gran de Gràcia and turn left at C/ Carolines. If you reach Av. Príncep d’Astúries, you’ve gone too far.
For more pictures of all these buildings, check out my set on Flickr
here.
Are you a fan of modernista or Art Nouveau buildings? Does a country’s architecture influence your decision to travel there? Comment below!
