Hidden Gaudí: Free works to see in Barcelona

Visiting Gaudí's works from the inside is expensive. Four tickets for the four major attractions are close to the cost of a flight, and during peak season, you need to book them well in advance. What almost no guide in Spanish bothers to list is the other list: what you can see from the street, without a ticket and without a specific time.

It is not a list of consolation. It contains the first work that Gaudí saw completed and inaugurated, the only building of his that won an award during his lifetime, and a piece that today is walked on by tens of thousands of people every day without them knowing who it belongs to. That being said, it's worth mentioning beforehand: from the street, you can see the facade, and in almost all of these buildings, the good stuff is inside.

They are at the top of the list for a chronological reason: they were the very first. The City Council commissioned the design on February 27, 1878, when Gaudí had passed the exams but did not yet have his architect's license: the commission had initially gone to another designer, and upon his death, Joan Martorell was the one who managed to get it transferred to that newly licensed architect.

In June, she presented a descriptive report, a watercolor drawing, and a plaster model. The two lampposts were inaugurated on January 14, 1879, and they are still there. It's worth taking a closer look at them: they have six arms distributed over two levels, the city's coat of arms on the shaft, and, at the top, a winged helmet, a symbol of Mercury, protector of commerce. Around them are coiled two serpents: they are those of the caduceus, which Mercury separated without violence. In a square dedicated to commerce, the iconography is not just decoration; it's a statement.

The restorations of 1965 and 1982 did not recover the bright polychromes of the helmet and the serpents, so what is seen today is more subdued than what was originally designed. There is also a second series, less well-known, in the Pla de Palau: four lampposts with three arms installed at the end of the 19th century, of which two remain, in front of the old Customs building.

The house is private. You can see the entire facade from the street across the way, with its double Baroque pediment and the balcony above the entrance. You can also enter the ground floor, which is now a restaurant, and which used to be the warehouse and commercial office of the textile company that commissioned its construction.

A detail that no one mentions and that is right at eye level: on the portal, there are columns shaped like spools of thread, and on the facade, there are three statues of saints. One is Saint Peter Martyr, the patron saint of the deceased owner, and the other two are the patron saints of his hometown. Incidentally, the person who commissioned the building was not him: he had died years before, and the application to the City Hall was signed by his widow.

It reached the street much later. The walkway was paved with a reinterpretation of that tile in 1971, and the one you walk on today is a redesign from 1997 with the relief inverted to withstand wear and tear. In other words: Gaudí never saw his design on a sidewalk.

The relief has a charm that is only revealed if one bends down: each piece features one-third of each of the three motifs – which have been interpreted as a starfish, an ammonite, and seaweed – in such a way that the design is only completed when they are put together. Seven tiles are needed to see the three complete motifs. And it should not be confused with the panot de flor (flower tile) with four petals, which is the standard paving of the rest of Barcelona and is not by Gaudí.

Above the pillar, there is an antimony orange tree, which is the tree of golden apples from the myth. The enclosure has been closed for renovations since 2018, so the interior is not accessible, but the gate is on public land and requires nothing. A useful warning: the dimensions of the gate that circulate on the internet are not documented in any source that we have been able to consult.

The rest of the list is explored on foot, without any prior planning.

• Casa Batlló and Casa Milà, viewed from the sidewalk of Passeig de Gràcia. They are 540 meters apart, on the same side of the street. The first one lights up in the afternoon, when the sun shines directly on it, and the ceramic tiles reflect the light; the second one works best at dusk, when it is illuminated.
• The Park Güell, for the most part. Only the monumental zone is paid for: the viaducts, the Passeig de les Palmeres, the wooded area, and the Turó de les Tres Creus — which offers the best panoramic view of the entire park, with a 360-degree view — are free and are always open.
• The Miralles Portal, located on the Manuel Girona promenade: a wavy wall with white mosaic (trencadís) and a metal gate in the shape of a fishing net. The estate that it enclosed was demolished around 1965, and today there is another building behind it. The iron cross that you see is a replica: the original is in the Gaudí House-Museum in Park Güell.
• The Teresianes School, in Sarrià. It is a functioning school and is not open for visits, but the exterior, made of exposed brick, can be seen from the street. Gaudí inherited it in 1888, with the construction already underway by another architect: only the foundations were in place. And he chose brick for a reason that pleased him: it was not expensive, and placing it in one way or another hardly changed the cost.
• The facade of the Sagrada Familia. Entering costs money; looking at it from Gaudí Square or from Marina Street does not. And the Nativity facade, which is the only one he built, is best viewed from below and with time, rather than during a rushed interior tour.

The first point corrects a common misconception found in lists of "free Gaudí attractions in Barcelona": the Bodegues Güell are not in Barcelona. They are located in Garraf, in the municipality of Sitges, about thirty kilometers away. They are not open to the public, and to make matters worse, their authorship is disputed: most scholars attribute them to Francesc Berenguer, and only a few to a collaboration between the two.

The second one is a list of highlights. This page exists because no one writes about these things in Spanish, not because it replaces visiting them. From the street, you can't see the courtyard of lights at Casa Batlló, the attic of arches at La Pedrera, the forest of columns at the Sagrada Família, or the Hypostyle Hall at Park Güell. If your budget only allows for one visit, this list helps you choose which one; it's not meant to help you avoid visiting altogether.

And if you're looking to visit a Gaudí work without paying, there is a documented way: the Palau Güell, which is managed by the Diputación, has days with free admission for everyone. We explain this on its page and on the page for combined tickets and how to save.