Torre Bellesguard

All the descriptions portray Bellesguard as "Gaudí's most Gothic building," and they all explain it in the same way: that it went through a neo-Gothic phase. This is a stylistic explanation for a decision that wasn't about style at all. The real reason lies beneath the surface.

In this area stood the tower where Martí l'Humà settled in 1408. The name comes from a letter of his: "a tower to which we have given the name bell esguard." Here, in 1409, he received the news that his only heir had died, and here, on the same year, he married Margarida de Prades, with the antipope Benedict XIII officiating and Vincent Ferrer present. He died in 1410 without an heir, and with him, the House of Barcelona came to an end.

So, the Gothic style of this house isn't just a facade. It's a statement. Gaudí didn't simply dress up a suburban house in medieval clothing; he built it at the very spot where a dynasty had ended, and he conveyed this through the building itself, with its battlements, its tower, and a coat of arms that can be read from the entrance. It's a narrative choice, and that's why it works, even for those who know nothing about arches.

Another nuance that almost no one mentions is that Gaudí did not build the house on top of the ruins: he placed it next to them and preserved what remained. Parts of the wall and two defensive towers at the entrance were maintained, so that those who arrive pass among remnants from the 15th century before seeing anything from the 20th century. The integration of the ruins was overseen by Joan Rubió i Bellver, who worked with Gaudí between 1893 and 1905.

The work spans from 1900 to 1909, with contributions from Domènec Sugrañes continuing until 1916. And there's an element that is always overlooked because it's not visible from the house: the viaduct from 1906-1908, designed by Gaudí, executed by Rubió and completed by Jujol, with ten inclined columns in the shape of elephant legs. That solution would be reused shortly afterwards in the viaducts of Park Güell.

The client was Maria Sagués i Molins (1835-1907), widow of Jaume Figueras, a food products merchant with a shop at number 83 on La Rambla. The sign of that business, "Antigua Casa Figueras," is still on La Rambla: today it is the Escribà pastry shop, and many people walk past it who will never associate that storefront with the mountain house.

Before her, the estate had another owner, and here is the best piece of information on this page. In 1888, it was purchased by Bishop Joan Baptista Grau i Vallespinós, that is, the man who had commissioned Gaudí to design the Astorga Episcopal Palace. Upon his death, the trustees sold it to Maria Sagués for 65,000 pesetas.

And there's more. The sales contract, dated June 12, 1900, was signed by Gaudí on behalf of the widow, because she couldn't write. The woman who paid for one of the most unique works of Catalan architecture couldn't put her own name on the document that she was purchasing. This is documented in Bassegoda's monograph, page 440.

A note on dates, because they get garbled too: Maria Sagués died in 1907, not in 1923. That is, two years before the work was finished. And the building is protected under the name "Casa Figueras," the surname of a husband who had been dead for thirteen years when construction began.

The plant is a square of 15 × 15 meters. The building is 19.5 meters high, and the octagonal tower, with the four-armed cross on top, reaches a total height of 33 meters. Inside, the attic is a succession of lobed parabolic brick arches, which is the part that surprises those who go up expecting a castle and find a structure that looks like the rib cage of an animal.

Those straight walls serve to debunk one of the most repeated clichés about Gaudí. It is false that none of his buildings have straight lines, and Bellesguard is the most visible proof: it is a prismatic volume of flat walls. The Casa Botines, the Astorga palace, and the Teresianas school are equally straight. And the ruled surfaces, which are the hallmark of Gaudí's work, are, by definition, generated by a straight line that moves. The matter is explained more calmly in "El método Gaudí."

Two more details that can be seen from the door. On the entranceway is the inscription "Ave Maria, full of grace, the Lord is with thee". And above the entrance, there is a coat of arms with two dates: 1409 and 1909. The marriage of the king and the completion of the building, exactly five hundred years, are inscribed on the same stone. It is the signature of the entire design of the house, represented in two numbers.

In 2005, Spain submitted twelve works by Gaudí to expand the 1984 inscription on the World Heritage List. ICOMOS, the organization that evaluates cultural nominations, accepted four: Casa Vicens, Casa Batlló, the crypt of the Colònia Güell, and the crypt with the facade of the Nativity of the Sagrada Família. It rejected the remaining eight, and also the criteria (iii) and (vi) that Spain had proposed.

It's a tough answer, but not an arbitrary one, and it explains why half of Gaudí's works are not on the list: it's not that they are inferior, but rather that the Convention was not intended to catalog everything of value. It's important to know this before reading a description that presents Bellesguard as a World Heritage site, because it is not.

The first point is an absence. There are no figures for the number of visitors to this house. The monument is not registered by the city's tourism observatory, so there is no publishable number. All the other pages on this website provide one; this one cannot, and I prefer to state that rather than estimate. Any figures you find about Bellesguard do not come from official statistics.

The second one is more practical and affects many people. The interior is not accessible by wheelchair. The official website states it plainly: visitors must be able to go up and down stairs. It is the only one of the eight Gaudí monuments that states it so clearly, and we should be grateful for that, because arriving there without knowing this would be much worse.

Regarding tickets, it's the least structured monument in the group: two options, audioguide, and guided tour, with no levels or combinations. Admission is free for those under 8 years old, which is the lowest age limit of the four, and there are reduced prices for those under 18 and for pensioners. Prices can be found on the official website.

It can be visited with tickets starting in September 2013, the latest of all Gaudí's major works to open, thanks to the initiative of Anna Mollet, the great-granddaughter of the family that bought the house in 1944. That buyer, Dr. Lluís Guilera, was an oncologist, not a gynecologist, as is sometimes read: he headed the Cancer Department of the Hospital de Sant Pau and established an oncology clinic here after the Franco regime prevented him from continuing his work due to his Catalanism. Sources disagree on who the current owner is, so this page does not claim to know.