Gaudí route in Barcelona
It is somewhat inevitable to think of the image associated with the city of Barcelona with the forms and buildings of the great and mysterious Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, who had in Salvador Dali, who always appreciated the eminently surreal essence in the forms of his buildings, one of his earliest and most enthusiastic supporters. Leaving aside the sinuous vertical triumph of the Holy Family, whose image is to Barcelona what the Big Ben is for London, the Eiffel Tower for Paris or the Brandenburg Gate to Berlin, we can establish a route for the Barcelona of Gaudi a distance that is possible to walk in one day, using as the ends the two works that share the same surname, of the industrialist, politician, patron of the arts and mentor Eusebi Guell Gaudi.
In the Raval district, particularly in the narrow Carrer Nou de la Rambla, which connects the Rambla de Catalonia, Poble Sec, is the last stop on our Gaudi route , The Guell Palace (http://www.palauguell.cat/), built between 1886 and 1890 in the tradition of the great and sumptuous Catalan mansions which is attached to the house that Eusebi Güell had in the adjoining Rambla of the Capuchins, with which it is connected via an interior courtyard.
This is a stunning monumental building with an entrance marked by two parabolic arches with exquisite wrought iron work that was built under the influence of oriental and exotic forms (mostly Byzantine but also Moorish and Arab) that expanded more than ever the imagination of the architect .
To get there we will begin our journey far away, in the upper part of the city, the dazzling mystery-Parc Güell, the wonderful garden near Tibidabo that would have housed a colony of exquisitely eccentric and modern houses with spectacular views to sea and city. The exemplary development was never built but the Park has a magical power that takes over the imagination and the subconscious of visitors through its extremely disturbing use of fragments of majolica and other fantastically evocative architectural and decorative elements of poignant symbolism that continues to disturb with its terrible beauty of truly angelic inspiration.
From one point you reach another walking down the Rambla de Catalonia thru Gran de Gracia and then into the distinctly modern and elegant Passeig de Gracia, a route in which we find two of the most precious jewels of the crown of Gaudi’s civil architecture , Casa Mila, also known as La Pedrera, famous for its stunning curved planes, the way that it evokes a mountain covered with snow or the enigmatic semi-human forms that could be said the chimneys of his prodigious roof, with its magical views of the city has, and finally the the Casa Batló, it would seem that it is perpetually haunted by unspeakable color gradations.
Its façade dressed in masked balconies is one of the most hauntingly beautiful apartments in Barcelona or any other real or imaginary city.
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