Description
Park Güell is a hillside park of viaducts that lean like tree trunks, mosaic-covered benches and fairy-tale gatehouses, in the La Salut neighborhood of Barcelona, above the city. Antoni Gaudí designed it between 1900 and 1914, and it is among his most playful works.
The story behind it is a flop. The industrialist Eusebi Güell planned a garden city of luxury villas for Barcelona's rich, with clean air and views, taking his model from England: hence the English word "Park". Sixty plots were drawn up, only two houses were ever built, and neither was by Gaudí.
The park's common spaces, such as stairways and terraces, carry symbols of Catalan identity and of Catholicism.
Begin at the entrance, marked by two whimsical gatehouses. Beyond them a stairway leads up to the dragon, a mosaic salamander that has become the park's symbol, and to the Hypostyle Room, a forest of columns holding up the terrace above.
That terrace is the park's heart. The serpentine bench around it curves like a sea serpent, covered in broken-tile mosaic by Josep Maria Jujol, and its shape makes little nooks where people sit together and talk.
Elevated roads, meant for carriages, wind across the slope on stone viaducts whose columns copy tree trunks. Gaudí built them from local stone so they blend into the hill, and hardly a line in them is straight.
Gaudí made these roads in the years when he studied nature most closely, and used inverted catenary arches to carry the load. Nothing in the park looks planned on a drawing board, and everything works.
At the top, steps climb the Hill of the Three Crosses, a calvary of three stone crosses. From there you can see the Sagrada Família, Montjuïc, the Torre Glòries and the Mediterranean in one sweep.
The site was a rocky hill the locals called the Bare Mountain, and buyers never came: it was too far from the center. Güell moved into the old house here in 1906 to set an example, and talked Gaudí into buying the unsold show home. Gaudí lived there with his father and niece.
In the end the city took over the estate and opened it as a public park in 1926. Today it is one of the Gaudí sites that UNESCO lists, and visitors will meet more than art: parrots and, with luck, a short-toed eagle.
Don't miss
• The serpentine bench.
• The dragon on the stairway.
• The Hypostyle Room.
• The Hill of the Three Crosses.
Did you know?
• One of the two gatehouses held a telephone booth.
• The house Gaudí lived in is now a museum about him.
• Sixty plots were planned, but only two houses were ever built.
The story behind it is a flop. The industrialist Eusebi Güell planned a garden city of luxury villas for Barcelona's rich, with clean air and views, taking his model from England: hence the English word "Park". Sixty plots were drawn up, only two houses were ever built, and neither was by Gaudí.
The park's common spaces, such as stairways and terraces, carry symbols of Catalan identity and of Catholicism.
Begin at the entrance, marked by two whimsical gatehouses. Beyond them a stairway leads up to the dragon, a mosaic salamander that has become the park's symbol, and to the Hypostyle Room, a forest of columns holding up the terrace above.
That terrace is the park's heart. The serpentine bench around it curves like a sea serpent, covered in broken-tile mosaic by Josep Maria Jujol, and its shape makes little nooks where people sit together and talk.
Elevated roads, meant for carriages, wind across the slope on stone viaducts whose columns copy tree trunks. Gaudí built them from local stone so they blend into the hill, and hardly a line in them is straight.
Gaudí made these roads in the years when he studied nature most closely, and used inverted catenary arches to carry the load. Nothing in the park looks planned on a drawing board, and everything works.
At the top, steps climb the Hill of the Three Crosses, a calvary of three stone crosses. From there you can see the Sagrada Família, Montjuïc, the Torre Glòries and the Mediterranean in one sweep.
The site was a rocky hill the locals called the Bare Mountain, and buyers never came: it was too far from the center. Güell moved into the old house here in 1906 to set an example, and talked Gaudí into buying the unsold show home. Gaudí lived there with his father and niece.
In the end the city took over the estate and opened it as a public park in 1926. Today it is one of the Gaudí sites that UNESCO lists, and visitors will meet more than art: parrots and, with luck, a short-toed eagle.
Don't miss
• The serpentine bench.
• The dragon on the stairway.
• The Hypostyle Room.
• The Hill of the Three Crosses.
Did you know?
• One of the two gatehouses held a telephone booth.
• The house Gaudí lived in is now a museum about him.
• Sixty plots were planned, but only two houses were ever built.