Casa Batlló

Casa Batlló is the building on Passeig de Gràcia that looks alive. It began as an ordinary apartment house of 1877 by Emili Sala Cortés; between 1904 and 1906 Antoni Gaudí transformed it for the textile industrialist Josep Batlló, and almost nothing of the original survives on the surface. The façade shimmers with trencadís, broken pieces of coloured glass and ceramic set into the render, that catches the light differently at every hour. The lower balconies, shaped like masks and framed by bone-like columns, earned it the nickname House of Bones in Barcelona.

The roof is the part people remember. Its ridge is covered with glazed tiles that arch like the back of an animal, and a popular reading sees in it the dragon of St George, patron of Catalonia, with the turret and its cross as the saint's lance driven into the beast. Inside, the logic of a living organism continues: the principal floor, over 700 square metres, flows in curved walls, doors and ceilings without a straight line in sight, and the central light well is lined with tiles that pass from deep blue at the top to pale shades lower down, so that daylight is spread evenly from the roof to the ground floor. Under the roof, the former service floor is spanned by sixty catenary arches that make the space feel like the inside of a ribcage.

The house stands in the so-called Block of Discord, a stretch of Passeig de Gràcia where several leading modernista architects built rival houses side by side, and comparing their façades from the pavement is a lesson in itself. In 1993 the building was bought and restored by the Bernat family, founders of the Chupa Chups company. Since 2005 it has formed part of the UNESCO World Heritage listing of the works of Antoni Gaudí.

Getting there

Casa Batlló stands at Passeig de Gràcia 43 in the Eixample district of central Barcelona. The nearest airport is Josep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat (BCN), about 13 km away. The nearest metro station is Passeig de Gràcia, a few steps from the entrance.