Day 108: Barcelona, Spain

The theme for today was modernisme, the Catalan modernista branch of the Art Nouveau movement whose most famous architect is Antoni Gaudi. Modernisme is characterized by a combination of traditional crafts - such as ceramic tiles, metalwork, stained glass and decorative stone carving - with modern technology.

We walked north from our hotel along the Passeig de Gracia into an area of the city called the Eixample ("extension"), named that because it was a planned extension of the city created in the mid-1800s. There is one particular block of the Passeig de Gracia, called the Mansana de Discordia (Block of Discord), which has three famous modernista buildings one right after the other. Our favorite was this Gaudi building called Casa Batllo.




Further up the street is one of Gaudi's most famous buildings, an apartment complex called La Pedrera ("the stone quarry").




The most famous modernista building in the world is the unfinished cathedral of La Sagrada Familia, which Gaudi was still working on when he died in 1926 (run over by a tram on the Gran Via). Construction on the building has continued sporadically over the years amid much controversy over how Gaudi would have wanted it (His plans and models were destroyed by anarchists in the 1930s).

Here are two different facades of La Sagrada Familia, which is an extremely impressive building despite its not having been completed. The first photo shows the Nativity facade, which was the first to be completed, and the second is the Passion facade (our favorite).






The last Gaudi destination for the day was Park Guell, a park in the north of the city which Gaudi was commissioned to design originally as part of a housing complex which failed. The land eventually became a public park and is filled with typical Gaudi leaning columns and ceramic work. There are also fantastic views of the whole city from up on the hill where the park is situated.

This is the tower of what was originally designed as the porter's lodge and is now used as the Centre d'Interpretacio which has an exhibit of the park's history we skipped.






Here is Frank in front of one of the areas of rocky columns supporting a promenade up on top.




And here he is again in front of another arcaded area of the park.




This is the view toward La Sagrada Familia:




And in this picture you can see the tree-lined Ramblas running all the way from the Plaza de Catalunya to the port.




Here is yet another part of the park with rock columns, this time with more of the leaning that you see often:




One of the most famous landmarks in Park Guell is this ceramic lizard:




Here is Frank in front of one of my favorite areas of the park. Up the steps behind him are a series of fountains and a number of ceramic sculptures including the lizard. In the background you can see the Hall of Columns which was originally designed to be the market area for the housing community. In typical Gaudi fashion, the outer layer of columns leans inwards.




After all this modernisme, we decided we needed a rest so we took a bus back to our hotel and enjoyed a much needed snack and rest up on the roof deck of the hotel.

In the evening, we set out to see the Museu Picasso in the nearby area of La Ribera and on the way we stopped to see two more landmark buildings.

This is the Palau de la Musica Catalana which was designed by another famous modernista architect, Lluis Domenech i Montaner. It's hard to get a photo of because it's on a very narrow street, but it's a very interesting building and also has beautiful stained-glass inside (and other details we couldn't see from peering through the glass doorway).





This is the Mercat Santa Caterina which was actually recently renovated to include the wave-shaped multi-colored roof.




I have no photos of the Picasso museum because we weren't allowed to take any, but it gave us an interesting perspective on the artist because the collection spans his entire career and includes drawings he did when he was 9 years old. It also has the entire collection of 44 paintings he did that are all variations and interpretations of the famous Velasquez painting Las Meninas (which is in the Prado in Madrid).

We finished the evening with dinner in one of the small plazas and a stroll home.

Here is a night time street shot from our walk:




An extremely busy day but we managed to cross off our list all of the critical Barcelona sights that we hadn't yet seen. Although there is always more to do, we both felt like we got a good impression of the city and found it to be extremely cosmopolitan and beautiful. It feels very international because of the mix of Catalan and Castillian Spanish - as well as all the languages brought in by the tourists from various countries. Frank claims he likes it even more than Madrid, but I call that blasphemy!

Tomorrow it's off to Tarragona. I'm very glad that I finally got to know Barcelona after all these years of loving Spain!

ILM