Saturday Feb 9, Part 1

Today we went to Antoni Gaudí’s most famous house, called Casa Batlló. It was built in 1877 and remodeled by Gaudí in the modernist and arte nuveau styles between 1905 and 1907. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves, because the place is phenomenal. I’ve wanted to see Gaudí’s houses for such a long time…they were worth the wait. All I’ll say before the photos is that in my opinion, almost all of Gaudí’s works look like they’re alive in some way. Especially in the case of Casa Batlló, everything inside and out (staircases, roof, door frames, etc.) seems to have been designed to look like the joints, scales and bones of a giant slumbering animal of some kind. The audio tour is really good and you can walk through 6 floors of the house (it’s HUGE), plus the patio and the roof, the roof and chimneys being some of the coolest parts of all. It is also worth adding that Gaudí was a genius archietect as well as an austere Catholic, which explains the huge ceramic crosses that tend to top his houses, including this one. Enjoy the photos. The house is amazing.


Here, the front of the house looks like it has eyes and noses. Again with the mosaics - they create the change in color that you see as your eye moves up and down the front.A mushroom-shaped seating area, intended to provide enough room for a young lady and her escort on one side, and another person on the other.
A much-photographed hallway. I might add that all the hallways and many of the upper rooms in the house look like this - not a straight line in sight, and completely white walls.
Awesome, famous chimney with 4 smokestacks. Behind the chimney is the amazing roof, which is covered with what look like green joints or vertebrae. Next to the roof ridge is the huge white ceramic cross.
A wall of the patio, covered with mosaics tiles. I think the little cup-shaped things are meant to hold flowers.