A weekend walk in Barcelona11

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Palau Guell (Guell Palace) is a magnificent town house in Barcelona's gothic quarter on the street "Nou de la Rambla" close to La Rambla. This was one of the homes of Gaudí's patron, Count Eusebi Güell, who commissioned the building in 1885 and made it his family home for 20 years. The spectacular Palau Güell (palace), constructed by Gaudí is now classed as World Heritage by UNESCO.

In the attic were the quarters of the house personnel and service rooms such as the kitchen, the food locker and the washing rooms.

Perhaps the most striking space of all is the roof. This is where Jack Nicholson looked for María Schneider in Antonioni’s “The Passenger”. It’s also where Gaudí used his patron’s Limoges dinner service to tile one of the chimneys in broken white porcelain fragments. It seems Güell had crockery to spare and didn’t mind Gaudí trashing it in a good cause. There are eighteen chimneys and ventilators, some plain brick, some trencadís jig-saw puzzle fragments of tiles, decorating geometrical or organically shaped caps poised on columns

Gaudí was the first Spanish architect to recover the old Moorish style of using fragments of tile to decorate a surface and on the roof of the Palau Güell, his first attempt at trencadís, he was riffing on the theme, showing off subtle variations on similar structures, playing with the effects of the changing light.It makes magical landscape against the backdrop of old Barcelona

More than one art historian has discussed the theory that the young Picasso, who lived just a few houses away, might, could or must (according to choice) have been influenced by Gaudí’s trencadís and stained glass designs before painting his later cubist pictures…

The central spire is not covered with tile but with the vitrified linings from the lime burning ovens at Güell’s quarry and cement factory at Garraf.Repeated firings in the kilns gave the stone the grey, glassy sheen you can see today on the spire

Parabolic windows pierce the lower part of the spire and above them are larger parabolic arches. These all let light into the dome above the hall giving its atmospheric lighting effect.

Finally the spire is topped with a lightning conductor in the shape of a Greek cross and a flying bat, one of the symbols of Barcelona

Güell was delighted with the building and Gaudí was happy to have such a showcase for his fertile imagination and creative genius. Nevertheless, Güell didn’t use the house much; he lived there on and off until 1906 when he moved to a semi-reclusive life in the Park Güell, his failed experiment in social housing

The house was, in fact, uncomfortable and impossible in very hot or cold weather. The social current was taking the wealthy and cultured towards the elegant streets of Passeig de Gràcia and the burgeoning Eixample and the Palau Güell was stranded in a degenerating district.

After Güell’s death his daughter lived there until the building was confiscated in the Civil War and turned into a police station and jail. Later, after narrowly escaping being sold to an American millionaire and taken piecemeal to the United States, it was taken over by the Diputació de Barcelona who used it first as the headquarters of the Friends of Gaudí Society and the as a Theatre Museum

In 1984 it was declared a World Heritage site and since then has been intermittently under restoration and is now once more open to the public

Text: InternetPictures: Joan Palau, Daniela Iacob & InternetCopyrights of the photos belong to each photographer

Presentation: Sanda Foişoreanuwww.slideshare.net/michaelasanda

Sound: Ramon Calduch - La puntaire