Casa Batlló

The Casa Batlló is the Gaudí work that least resembles a building and most resembles a creature. The facade is covered in glass and ceramic discs that change color depending on the time of day, the balconies look like iron masks, the columns on the ground floor resemble bones, and the roof has scales. None of that is accidental, but it is also not explained by its author: Gaudí did not write down what he intended to represent, and everything that is said about dragons and knights are later interpretations.

The first thing to know is that this house was not built by him. There was already a building of rental apartments on the land, a typical building constructed in 1877 by Emili Sala Cortés, the architect for whom Gaudí had worked as a draftsman. It is often told the other way around, that Sala was his teacher at the School of Architecture, but the dates do not support this: Sala graduated in 1876 and Gaudí in 1878. The textile industrialist Josep Batlló i Casanovas bought the building in 1903 with the idea of demolishing it and building something else. Gaudí convinced him that it was not necessary, and between 1904 and 1906, he transformed it from the inside.

The Casa Batlló is not alone. On the same stretch of Passeig de Gràcia, between Aragó and Consell de Cent, there are five buildings by five different architects, not three, which is what is usually said. The odd-numbered buildings from 35 to 43, one after another, are the Casa Lleó i Morera by Lluís Domènech i Montaner, the Casa Mulleras by Enric Sagnier, the Casa Bonet by Marcel·lià Coquillat, the Casa Amatller by Josep Puig i Cadafalch, and the Casa Batlló. None of them look like the one next to it, and one of them is not even modernist.

Barcelonans of the day dubbed the ensemble the Manzana de la Discordia (Block of Discord), a pun that needs Spanish to work: manzana means both the apple of the Greek myth and a city block. It is often said that the joke is lost in Catalan, and that isn't accurate: for decades people said mansana de la Discòrdia, using the colloquial Castilianism heard on the street, and the double meaning worked just as well. What has gradually killed it is the modern standardization toward illa, which is the correct Catalan word for a city block and doesn't mean any kind of fruit.

And there's a construction detail that completely refutes the rivalry that all the guides describe. Gaudí moved the cross tower towards the center of the roof to avoid damaging the stepped top of the Casa Amatller, the building by Puig i Cadafalch that is next to his. If he had wanted to win the competition, he would have placed it on the edge of the dividing wall, which is where everyone on the street would have seen it. The building says the opposite of the legend: the architects of the block looked at each other sideways, but they gave way to each other.

That interpretation is coherent, it's beautiful, and it's accepted almost everywhere. It is also unprovable. The honest formulation comes from the institution itself: there is no proof that Gaudí wanted to represent the legend, and neither is there any evidence to the contrary. Saint George is the patron saint of Catalonia, Gaudí was a Catalan nationalist and a believer, and the building lends itself to it. That's what we have to stick with: it's a reasonable interpretation, not a fact.

Some people see other things and have their own arguments. The maritime design is based on the facade and the interiors: the glass discs reflect light like the surface of the water, the railings and handrails create swirling patterns, the windows in the viewing area range from blue to green, and the moldings on the main floor evoke shells, seaweed, and broken waves. Gaudí had spent a great deal of time looking at the Mediterranean Sea and the forms that emerge from it, and in this house, the interior seems to be viewed from within a wave.

The carnivalesque reading begins with the balconies, with nine iron masks repeated in a row, and with the feeling that the entire facade is a disguise placed over a mundane building, which is literally what happened in 1904. And the skeletal aspect comes from the street: in Barcelona, they call it the casa dels ossos (house of bones) long before it became a museum, because of the columns on the ground floor that are shaped like femurs, and because of the railings that look like jaws. The house withstands all three interpretations without contradicting any of them, and it is probably that which makes it work: each visitor leaves convinced that they have seen something different.

The rest of the tour explores the main floor, the level where the Batlló family lived, including the gallery overlooking the promenade and its undulating window with not a single straight line; the staircase made of wood that spirals upwards like a spine, with a handrail carved so that the hand can grip it without thinking; the attic, a space of white catenary arches that served as a laundry room and storage space for the tenants; and the rooftop.

On the main floor, there are two features that almost no one expects. One is the mushroom-shaped fireplace, with two facing benches inside the recess, a corner designed for conversation by the warmth. The other is the adjustable ventilation system of doors and woodwork, with wooden lattices that open and close to allow air to circulate without needing to open the window, in a house that still didn't have anything like air conditioning. These are details that don't appear in the photos and that better explain than the facade how Gaudí thought: first the problem, then the form.

It's important to remember that, beneath the grandeur, this remained a multi-family building. The Batlló family occupied the main floor, the "noble floor," while the floors above were apartments rented out to other families. This explains the two staircases – the grand staircase leading from the entrance hall, and the service staircase – and it also explains why the attic was a communal laundry room, not a noble hall. The renovation didn't transform the building into a palace; it left it functioning exactly as it had before, only with a facade that cost a fortune and a courtyard that distributed light better than any other building on the street.

The most economical ticket does not include access to the roof. The tiled roof and the mosaic chimneys – that is, the image for which most people buy the ticket – are accessible starting from the second level. This is the most useful information that can be provided about this monument, and practically no one explains it.

The same applies to the nighttime visit, which has its charm but also doesn't allow access to the roof. The four types of tickets, what each one includes, and the access rules are detailed on the ticket page.