Boots on the Ground! Barcelona 2! Antoni Gaudi’s Casa Batlló.

Welcome back to part two of our 3 part Barcelona and Beyond travelogue.

The entire city of Barcelona is marked by the architecture of Antoni Gaudi. His signature is all over the entire cityscape in various forms. Building, parks, facades, hell as you saw last time he even did some of the damn street lamps.

Today we will be sharing the experience of visiting one of Antoni Gaudi’s finest works, Casa Batlló. A UNESCO World Heritage site that welcomes over one million visitors per year. It’s one of many Gaudi features around the city.

Casa Batlló is a fascinating structure and it’s well worth your time to give its history a read.

From the Casa Batlló website.

“Originally, the building was constructed in 1877 by Emili Sala Cortés (one of Gaudí’s architecture professors) when Barcelona still did not have electric lighting. In 1903, it was acquired by Josep Batlló i Casanovas, a textile industrialist who owned several factories in Barcelona and was a prominent businessman.

Josep Batlló gave complete creative freedom to Antoni Gaudí, initially commissioning works that involved demolishing the building. However, thanks to Gaudí’s boldness, the demolition of the house was ruled out, and a full renovation was carried out between 1904 and 1906.

The architect completely transformed the façade, redistributing the interior partitioning, expanding the light well, and turning the interior into a true work of art. In addition to its artistic value, the building has immense functionality, more aligned with our time than with the past. Some even see it as a precursor to the architectural avant-gardes of the late 20th century.”

Gaudi basically took a multi-storey house with standard front and rear facing windows and minimal airflow and repurposed, rebuilt and re-imagined it entirely.

Let’s take a look, shall we?

From the outside as you approach.

The entire block of this street is fascinating architecturally. 

“Next to Casa Batlló and in the same period, prominent architects renovated other houses that once competed for the urban planning awards held by the Ajuntament de Barcelona, which is why this area became known as the “Block of Discord.” These houses are also modernist and now form a unique set, which includes:

– Casa Batlló, by Antoni Gaudí
– Casa Amatller, by Josep Puig i Cadafalch
– Casa Lleó Morera, by Lluís Domènech i Montaner
– Casa Mulleras, by Enric Sagnier
– Casa Josefina Bonet, by Marcel·lí Coquillat.”

The street scene outside is crazy busy as I discovered on many occasions.

There were gold and silver “Christmas” lights strung across the entire plaza you see here and while I wasn’t here after dark, I’ll bet it’s fucking phenomenal to see in person. Sorry, I had another tour scheduled about 30 minutes after finishing this one and had to basically sprint all the way through the Gothic Quarter just to make it on time.

Daylight photos only today.

Let’s look inside!

That’s from the ground floor looking up. What you will notice here is that each floor has its own unique design elements, including different materials used. This is a main ventilation shaft that not only brings in fresh air throughout the entire building, but the extensive use of windows turned what was a drab, poorly lit interior into a spectacle of natural lighting.

Here’s a look from the foyer on the 2nd floor.

Different window shapes and sizes, different types of chandeliers, different textural surfaces. One of the unique things about this tour, unless an area was cordoned off they WANTED you to touch, feel and appreciate the various surfaces and materials used.

On the next floor a completely different chandelier.

How many straight lines do you see in that photo?

I’m seriously struggling for the proper words here so let’s let the visuals do the talking.

A view outside from the staircase.

The upper floors were divided between living room, bedroom, office and visual galleries.

Love the “framing for framing sake” element of this next one.

One of the recently revealed aspects of the house was the back of the house and the gardens. Being a residence and then essentially an architecture design school the front facade was basically the only thing noticed from the street.

Here’s the back view with all of the sun shades.

Back inside the house the airflow and visual expanse actually grew even more pronounced the higher you ascended.

Look at all of the different building materials used! Holy shit!

Tired of your basic, boring rectangular hallways?

The top floor was the primary living quarters for the family. Why?

Fuck if I know.

Here’s the living room.

And the study.

The rest of the top floor was dedicated to multimedia displays. Casa Batlló is still essentially an architecture school. Students were also encouraged to share their own pieces in various forms of media to demonstrate the creativity that they learned from Gaudi. It was phenomenal and really truly made me wish I still dropped acid.

Goddammit why can’t we get the videos to work right? I had a couple of killer pieces too.

The top floor and roof were priced as “premium” and you paid accordingly if you wanted to see them. All told I think this entire experience was around 45 Euros if you’re interested.

The roof just in recent years became a feature of the tour. It’s design has been called similar to the back of a dragon or the many arched back of a sea serpent. It’s cool as fuck but you know me and my fun with heights thing.

The city view from the roof is fucking insane.

For the curious, starting on the 3rd floor there was a bar on every floor AND a lovely outdoor bar in the rooftop gardens. Believe it or not I didn’t partake here because that tour I mentioned I needed to get to right after was a tapas and wine tour. It was fucking awesome too.

As you prepare to leave Casa Batlló you are held back a few moments to view one final immersive visual show.

Anyone see the immersive Van Gogh exhibit?

Similar to that. A large white room with some columns and full surface video projections.

Yes, I wobbled a bit but it was super fucking cool. A basic kaleidoscope of constantly changing imagery.

A fascinating experience and one I’ll remember forever.

Funny thing was, it wasn’t even on the agenda. That wine and tapas tour was booked and paid for months in advance but I did this one because I had nothing planned until the tapas and wine tour and felt it might be in my best interest to not eat or drink prior to that tour. With a few available hours to spare this happened.

I’m extremely happy that it did.

For our final piece in this boots on the ground experience we’re actually taking a day trip away from Barcelona.

Think you’ll enjoy the destinations.

See you then.