Catalog of Gaudí's works

Try searching for how many works Antoni Gaudí built. You will find 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 18, 21, and 23, depending on the page. None of those figures are false, and none are comparable to each other, because each one counts different things without saying so: some include only buildings, others add furniture and liturgical objects, some count interventions in buildings by other architects, others are limited to Barcelona.

This page does what none of the others do: it states its criteria before presenting the information. Here are the buildings that have been constructed and still exist, with their actual condition. Not the furniture, not the liturgical objects, not the projects that remained on paper. The latter have their own page, because they are just as interesting.

The works that are included in the list must meet the following three conditions: they must have been constructed, they must still exist today, at least in part, and they must be architecture or urban element, not furniture or an object. Excluded are, and in some cases, regrettably: the furniture in the Sobrellano chapel-mausoleum, the liturgical objects, the display case from the Comella glove shop, and the rest of the ephemeral pieces.

Where the authorship is disputed — and in the works of Gaudí, this happens more often than it seems — the reference list provides the information. Where the sources give different years, the page for that work explains why.

The column on the right is explained by a single document. The Decree 1794/1969, of July 24th, published in the Official State Gazette on August 20th, 1969, declared seventeen works by Gaudí as historical-artistic monuments all at once. This is an unusual administrative act, and it has a reason: until then, Spanish regulations required a building to be a century old to be protected, and Gaudí's works did not meet that requirement. He was the first "contemporary" artist to receive that protection in Spain.

A point that confuses many people, including some official websites: in Catalonia, those same declarations appear today as BCIN and not as BIC. They are not two distinct protections, and there is no "Catalan declaration of 1993": it is the same asset, and in 1993, a regional law simply renamed the category.

Outside of that decree, there are seven projects that only have municipal designation, or none at all. This isn't just a bureaucratic detail; the level of protection determines what can be modified and what permits are required.

This information is hardly found in any guide and explains a lot. When, in 2005, Spain requested to expand the site inscribed in 1984, it proposed twelve works. ICOMOS, the organization that advises UNESCO, recommended four, and the reason given is as follows: the Convention does not aim to protect all assets of great interest, but rather a select list of the most outstanding from an international perspective.

The eight rejected entries were the Pavilions of the Güell Estate, the Colegio de las Teresianas, Casa Calvet, Torre Bellesguard, El Capricho de Comillas, the Episcopal Palace of Astorga, Casa Botines in León, and the cathedral of Palma. In other words: the three works by Gaudí outside of Catalonia were submitted and were not selected. The fact that a building is not on the list says nothing about its quality; it says something about what criteria that list uses.

A catalog can also be used for the opposite purpose: to remove things. These are some of the most common misconceptions in Barcelona, and some of them are literally in the path of Gaudí's works.

There is a structural reason why attributing works to Gaudí is more difficult than it seems, and it is important to understand it before relying on any list, including this one. Francesc Berenguer i Mestres, who worked with him from 1887 until his death in 1914, abandoned his studies in 1888 without obtaining his degree. Without a degree, he could not sign projects, so other architects signed them, and often Gaudí signed them himself.

The consequence is uncomfortable, and it must be stated: a signature by Gaudí does not prove that the project is by Gaudí. And conversely: the Xalet del Catllaràs, which he never claimed, was accredited as his in February 2026 by a study commissioned by the Generalitat, which concluded that he was the author of the project but did not oversee the work. The signature is the least reliable indicator of this profession.