From Sagrada Família to Park Güell, Antoni Gaudí has scattered his glistening glass tiles all across the Catalan capital. We now rush to Barcelona to get bewildered by its unrepeatable architectural signature and feel the curvaceous walls of its artwork gliding gently beneath our fingers. In the heart of the city, Gaudí’s Casas symbolize the architect’s mesmerizing aesthetics.
1. Casa Vicens
When the construction of Gaudí’s first precious stone was commissioned by Manuel Vicens I Montaner (stock broker by profession, a manufacturer of bricks and tiles by legend) back in 1883, the fruitful career of the worldwide adored Catalan architect was only a couple of months long. Now, the famous casa stands hidden in the narrow passageway of the Gràcia district, recognized by the city as the most emblematic building in Barcelona.
As his first important work, Casa Vicens falls under Gaudí’s introductory phase, the one that the architects of tomorrow will recognize as the Orientalist period. And indeed, this lyrical masterpiece was inspired by fragrant traces of European builders, Islamic-Hispanic art, as well as Moorish architecture, yet it expresses a unique and organic expression that will later on be representative to Gaudí’s building poetics.
As the legend says, Casa Vicens was built on a field of yellow flowers, the exact ones the architect made a reference to on the building’s façade, adorned with floral tiles and dressed in a collage of bricks and ceramic, representing the exotic influence of distant Islamic cultures. Enveloped with a rubble wall and a dwarf-palm-inspired iron strip fence, the casa’s floral theme expands to the garden. Initially, Gaudí devised three of them, respecting Montaner’s need for a bright and close-to nature home and honouring his culture’s Mediterranean heritage with swaying palms and lemon trees.
By the looks of it, Gaudí’s first and everlasting love was nature, but the architect’s true magic was in the details. Once you step inside Casa Vicens, its details come alive, descending down the climbing ivy from the ceiling, lush with strawberry trees and cherry branches. The dining room reveals a dash of the Spanish South, from which the Muslim-inspired smoking lounge invites visitors to lay back and cherish the past.
Owned by the Jover family since 1899, the casa is now fully restored and open to the public. Inaugurated in 2016, the Casa Vicens museum pays respect to the very roots of Art Nouveau in Barcelona and the architecture that spurred right here, in the heart of the Gràcia district.
Directions: Carrer de les Carolines, 18-24
2. Casa Milà
Kindled by the yellow flowers and explored on the façade of Casa Vicens for the first time, Gaudí’s endless obsession with primary elements of nature and their organic flow reached its conclusion in the architect’s last finished piece of art – Casa Milà. Known worldwide as La Pedrera, the building was commissioned by the suave philanderer Pere Milà i Camps in 1905 and constructed a couple of years later, in 1912. If Casa Vicens is Barcelona’s most emblematic building, than Casa Milà is the everlasting symbol of the Catalan Modernista movement.
Sitting on the corner of Carrer de Provenca and Passeig de Gràcia, La Pedrera displays the most unfathomable corners of Gaudí’s whimsical mind. Perhaps a visitor will find it challenging or bizarre, but in fact, the casa inspires with its eccentricity and its fluent rhythm. Constructed in 9 levels, the multifunctional design of the building showcases Gaudí’s efforts for making artwork that people will actually live in. To bring its tenants closer together, the architect has included just one lift per every two floors.
Devised with steel-beam-supported limestone blocks, the façade of La Pedrera encircles the figure-eight-shaped interior. On the inside, Gaudí made the living space brighter with interior courtyards. On the outside, the brightness of his artistic mind is astonishing as it is surreal. Carved out of stone and made endlessly curvaceous, the exterior of Casa Milà represents Gaudí’s passion for organic movements and geometrical forms.
Over here, the form defies linearity and continues on to the roof. A bona fide piece of expressionistic art, the terrace of La Pedrera’s roof is a public gallery open for artists, romantics and lovers – to walk among the chimneys and fans, anthropomorphic and sky lit, under the twinkling reflections of marble and glass is what surreal dreams are made of.
While on the site, take a moment to visit La Pedrera’s attic as well. Once a laundry space, it now houses exhibitions dedicated to the complex and beautiful creations of Barcelona’s finest master. Wait for the façade skylight to glimmer, and feel the building’s stone curving under your fingers.
Directions: Provença, 261-265
3. Casa Batlló
As the unparalleled piece of artistic eccentricity, Gaudí’s “House of Bones” is a truly indescribable one. More than anything else, Casa Batlló is an architectural phantasy, a nightmarishly spectacular tour de force and, as you’ll come to experience it, an endlessly intriguing, extravagant and controversial objet d’art. The decadent party-goer Josep Batlló i Casanovas commenced it back in 1904, and Gaudí made it the wildest of architectural beasts.
With curves in his mind, the same ones he will later use as a primary form of La Pedrera, Gaudí devised his design to resemble a skeleton. Nicknamed Casa dels ossos, the building is an intricate visceral structure, without, as legend goes, a single straight line. Returning to his Catalan roots, the architect made the façade an elaborate mosaic of golden, green and blue broken ceramic tiles and Montjuic sandstone, and divided it into three disparate, yet harmoniously connected sections.
Its most recognizable feature – the iron balconies – are set across the central section and left hovering above the gallery to recall Monet’s Water Lilies. Covered with plaster fragments and polychrome pottery, the skin of the façade is undulated and sparkly. Casa Batlló’s second nickname, “the house of yawns”, comes from a specific layout of multi-colored stained glass windows and balconies above.
Overhead, the House of Bones presents the dragon roof. Often seen as a skeleton of a beast, the casa finishes with the spine, glistening with iridescent ceramic tiles of different colours, and a lonely triangular window to resemble a beast’s eye. Designed with sphere-shaped masonry pieces, the spine roof changes its colours depending on the point view.
The façade hides the belly of the beast – the Mediterranean-inspired shell-white interior supported with Gaudí’s favourite gambit, Catenary arches. An entrance hall to the noble floor reveals tortoise shell vaulted walls and introduces the casa’s most appraised constructional piece, the oak staircase that, once again, implies to the back of a dragon. Up the spine of a beast, and down again to the Venetian-mask balconies on the façade, Gaudí’s House of Bones is a piece of a chimerical, yet ingenious architectural design.
Directions: Passeig de Gràcia, 43
A long time ago, Barcelona had been named the City of Gaudí; tempting and surreal, the architect’s work will continue to amaze us for generations to come. Be a part of the experience and rejoice over their resplendence.