Description
At Palau Güell, the Güell family's mansion on Carrer Nou de la Rambla, the hosts had already looked their guests over before they reached the top of the stairs. Behind the ornate ceiling of the reception room, small hidden windows let the family peek down from the floor above, and fix their outfits if needed.
Gaudí built the palace from 1886 to 1888 for Eusebi Güell, the industrial tycoon who was his great patron, in the El Raval neighborhood just off La Rambla. The idea was a new residence that matched or beat the nearby Palau Moja, owned by Güell's brother-in-law.
The house was built for show. Carriages drove in through two iron gates shaped as parabolic arches, with ironwork like seaweed and a bronze phoenix between them, the emblem of Catalonia's economic and cultural rebirth. The horses went down a ramp to the stables in the basement.
The heart of the house is the main room for entertaining. Its tall dome is pierced with small holes, and at night lanterns were hung outside them, so the ceiling looked like a starlit sky. The transition between the parabolic arches and the marble columns anticipates much of Gaudí's later work.
The palace has seven levels, from the stables in the basement to the roof, and a fluid layout that makes a small plot feel large. The roof, with its chimneys covered in broken tile, is a first draft of the ones on Casa Milà.
The palace opened in 1888, the year of the Barcelona Universal Exhibition, and its visitors included the queen regent, King Umberto I of Italy and the American president Grover Cleveland. Güell lived here until 1906.
The building later served as police headquarters during the Civil War. In 1944 a rich American wanted to take it home stone by stone, but in 1945 the family gave it to the provincial government on condition that it never be altered.
Some of the original stone proved weak, and the palace needed years of restoration, finished in April 2011. Film lovers may know it already: Antonioni shot the first meeting of Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider here, in The Passenger.
It belongs to the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Works of Antoni Gaudí", and compared with his later work it looks somber, but its details already hint at everything to come.
Gaudí built the palace from 1886 to 1888 for Eusebi Güell, the industrial tycoon who was his great patron, in the El Raval neighborhood just off La Rambla. The idea was a new residence that matched or beat the nearby Palau Moja, owned by Güell's brother-in-law.
The house was built for show. Carriages drove in through two iron gates shaped as parabolic arches, with ironwork like seaweed and a bronze phoenix between them, the emblem of Catalonia's economic and cultural rebirth. The horses went down a ramp to the stables in the basement.
The heart of the house is the main room for entertaining. Its tall dome is pierced with small holes, and at night lanterns were hung outside them, so the ceiling looked like a starlit sky. The transition between the parabolic arches and the marble columns anticipates much of Gaudí's later work.
The palace has seven levels, from the stables in the basement to the roof, and a fluid layout that makes a small plot feel large. The roof, with its chimneys covered in broken tile, is a first draft of the ones on Casa Milà.
The palace opened in 1888, the year of the Barcelona Universal Exhibition, and its visitors included the queen regent, King Umberto I of Italy and the American president Grover Cleveland. Güell lived here until 1906.
The building later served as police headquarters during the Civil War. In 1944 a rich American wanted to take it home stone by stone, but in 1945 the family gave it to the provincial government on condition that it never be altered.
Some of the original stone proved weak, and the palace needed years of restoration, finished in April 2011. Film lovers may know it already: Antonioni shot the first meeting of Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider here, in The Passenger.
It belongs to the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Works of Antoni Gaudí", and compared with his later work it looks somber, but its details already hint at everything to come.