Barcelona

After a slow start to the morning (stayed in bed until 9:30) I set off to explore Barcelona. I’ve been here before for a long weekend, so had seen a lot of the sights. I wanted to major on a couple of places I hadn’t seen: Casa Batlo (I ran out of time and energy last time) and Palau Guell (renovation only completed in 2011), both of them works by Gaudi. Palau Guell was an early work, and he designed and built the whole building; Casa Batlo was a late work and involved gutting and renovating an existing building.

Finding these places involved walking up La Rambla (the ship was docked in the port just at the bottom of this famous street) and then along Passeig de Gracia. The weather was sunny and the temperature was around 26 degrees, so the walk was no hardship. Along the way I saw a protest of some sort: no idea what it was about, though I was interested in view of all the protests we’ve read about because of measures to control the economy.

There was a 5-10 minute queue to get into Casa Batlo, and it cost €18.50 (to pay for restoration work) but it was worth it. 

We were able to see the old home of the Batlo family on the ground floor, and then go up the staircase, past various apartments, to see the attics and the roof. This was more than just a building. Gaudi designed the stair rails and the windows and doors, and even ventilation systems. His attention to detail was incredible. The stair rails were ergonomically designed before the word was even invented.

The building has a central light well for both light and ventilation. The tiles at the top are a darker colour than those at the bottom, so that from the bottom they all look the same colour. 

The windows at the top are smaller than at the bottom, as more light floods into the top floors from the light well.

 I loved the various shapes of the doors and windows, and they way they curved to fit the walls. It was based on a marine theme, and the colours and shapes reflect this. This is one of the doors.

Even on the roof, the shapes are like those of a giant sea dragon. One detail mentioned by the commentary that I could not find is a small window on the roof looking towards Sagrada Familia, which Gaudi was in the process of building as he finished Casa Batlo.

One thing I had noticed on the streets was the wonderful tessellated tiles, with a linked design. I discovered that they were designed by Gaudi, to be made in ceramics for Casa Batlo, though used in another house instead. How lovely that the city has adopted this design for its streets.

I walked back towards the ship, stopping at Palau Guell on the way. This was a much darker building. Rather than the fanciful tiles and shapes of Casa Batlo (and La Pedrera that I saw on my last visit), this was marble and wrought iron and wood – upright rather than curving, and extremely detailed. I did not like it nearly as much. It lacked the light of his other buildings, though it still showed the practical ingenuity in things like ventilation, and it had wonderful parabolic curves (compared with the quaternary curves of Casa Batlo). I did not feel inspired to take photos, except on the roof which had the fanciful chimneys and undulating curves of the roof that I’d seen a few years ago at La Pedrera (though La Pedrera’s were more numerous and more fanciful).