Description
Casa Vicens is a small Modernista house in the Gràcia district of Barcelona, and the first major work of Antoni Gaudí. Striped with brick, stone and colorful tiles, it is a fantasy of turrets and Oriental details. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a museum.
The first thing to see is the facade, a play of colored tiles with flower motifs against rough stone and brick. The flowers are real: when Gaudí went to measure the plot, it was covered in small yellow flowers, with a palmetto growing among them. He kept both, and the palmetto's leaves became the cast-iron gate.
Look for the touches borrowed from Persia, India, Japan and Moorish Spain. Gaudí drew from the Neo-Mudéjar style but made it his own, with arches, columns of exposed brick and temple-shaped finishes. Inside, the smoking room has a ceiling dripping with plaster stalactites in the Islamic style.
The terrace and the porch fountain are worth a look too: its thin sheet of water breaks the light into a rainbow.
Manuel Vicens, a stockbroker, wanted a summer house in Gràcia, then still a separate town of farms and second homes. He commissioned Gaudí in 1878, when the architect had just graduated, and the house was built between 1883 and 1885.
The house caused a sensation. It was a family home for decades, and over the years the large garden was sold off piece by piece, its monumental brick waterfall included. In 1925, a protégé of Gaudí enlarged the house, after the master turned the job down.
It stayed a family home until 2014, when a bank bought it, and opened as a museum in 2017.
Gaudí wrote an article in 1881 about the family home. "The house is the small family nation," he said. Casa Vicens was his first attempt at making one, and the visit shows how much of Gaudí's later language is already here.
The first thing to see is the facade, a play of colored tiles with flower motifs against rough stone and brick. The flowers are real: when Gaudí went to measure the plot, it was covered in small yellow flowers, with a palmetto growing among them. He kept both, and the palmetto's leaves became the cast-iron gate.
Look for the touches borrowed from Persia, India, Japan and Moorish Spain. Gaudí drew from the Neo-Mudéjar style but made it his own, with arches, columns of exposed brick and temple-shaped finishes. Inside, the smoking room has a ceiling dripping with plaster stalactites in the Islamic style.
The terrace and the porch fountain are worth a look too: its thin sheet of water breaks the light into a rainbow.
Manuel Vicens, a stockbroker, wanted a summer house in Gràcia, then still a separate town of farms and second homes. He commissioned Gaudí in 1878, when the architect had just graduated, and the house was built between 1883 and 1885.
The house caused a sensation. It was a family home for decades, and over the years the large garden was sold off piece by piece, its monumental brick waterfall included. In 1925, a protégé of Gaudí enlarged the house, after the master turned the job down.
It stayed a family home until 2014, when a bank bought it, and opened as a museum in 2017.
Gaudí wrote an article in 1881 about the family home. "The house is the small family nation," he said. Casa Vicens was his first attempt at making one, and the visit shows how much of Gaudí's later language is already here.