History and interesting facts about Park Güell

To understand Park Güell, you have to accept an idea that clashes with what you see upon arrival: it is not a park, but an abandoned housing development. Every element that is admired today had a commercial function. The two houses at the entrance were the gatehouse. The hall of columns was going to be the neighborhood market. The square above was the common space for the residents. The staircase with the figure was the entrance hall welcoming a product for sale.

What's remarkable is that almost none of it was actually used for its intended purpose, and yet, everything works just as well. It's strange how something that was a failure can age so gracefully.

Eusebi Güell had traveled to England and had seen the garden cities, those residential areas of houses with gardens separated from the industrial city. He liked the concept and wanted to import it. That's why the name is written in English, with a k: it's not a Catalan misspelling or a later trend, it's the original commercial name. A product from England is sold with an English name.

The land chosen was a hillside in the Collserola mountain range, known for what it was: the Muntanya Pelada (Bare Mountain), dry, without trees, with a considerable slope. Güell commissioned the project to Gaudí in 1900, and the leveling work began that same autumn. The plan was to divide the estate into sixty triangular plots, with the condition that each house would occupy no more than one-sixth of its plot, so that there would be greenery between each one.

One was sold. In 1902, it was purchased by the lawyer Martí Trias i Domènech, who also commissioned his house from Juli Batllevell, not Gaudí. The other dwelling in the complex is the pilot house, which the contractor of the works, Josep Pardo, built to demonstrate how the neighborhood would look. No one wanted it, and in 1906, it was purchased by Gaudí's father. The architect moved there with his father and his niece and lived in the park until 1925.

The reasons for the failure are not a mystery. The estate was outside the city, and public transportation didn't reach it. The slope was discouraging. The prices were high. And above all, the clientele that Güell was targeting – the industrial bourgeoisie that had made money with textiles – did not want to be isolated; they wanted to be in the Paseo de Gracia, where they could be seen and see others. In the same years that Park Güell wasn't selling plots, these people were paying fortunes for apartments just four hundred meters from the Liceu.

The construction work was halted in 1914. Güell died in 1918, and his heirs offered the property to the City Council, which approved the purchase on May 26, 1922. Four years later, it opened as a public park, and Gaudí died in June of the same year.

The Park Güell is visited as a sculpture park, and in reality, it is an engineering feat. The slope was the problem: developing a hillside requires moving earth, and moving earth costs money. Gaudí decided not to move it. He designed the paths following the contour lines, and where it was necessary to gain height, he built viaducts with columns inclined inwards, calculated to work only under compression.

The water system is the technical detail that is most worth knowing before entering, because it changes the way you perceive the space. The plaza de la Naturaleza is not an open area: it is the ceiling of the Hypostyle Hall. Its floor is designed to filter rainwater, which flows down the hollow interior of the eighty-six columns to a cistern of 1,200 cubic meters excavated below. The design of the staircase is not just decorative: it is the outlet for the overflow. And, by the way, the columns are eighty-six built out of the ninety planned: anyone who reads "ninety columns" is quoting the blueprint, not the building.

The undulating bench that surrounds the square measures approximately 110 meters and is probably the most photographed piece of furniture in Europe. It is attributed to Gaudí by tradition, but the design and execution of the mosaic work (trencadís) were largely the work of Josep Maria Jujol, then a young collaborator and later an architect in his own right. The same is true for the medallions on the ceiling of the Hypostyle Hall, those discs that resemble suns and which incorporate fragments of glass, porcelain, and domestic ceramics.

Saying this doesn't diminish Gaudí's achievements in any way. It was his work and his commission. But the "trencadís" (broken tile mosaic) of Park Güell is the clearest example of something that runs throughout his entire career: he worked with a workshop, and a significant portion of what we admire today as his own creations actually came from the hands of others.

• The three crosses at the highest point are not the originals. The Calvary of Turó de les Tres Creus was destroyed in 1936, and what you see today is a reconstruction from 1939. It is the viewpoint with the best views of the area, and it is free.
• There are elements from other works by Gaudí within the park. When the garden of Casa Vicens was reduced in the 1960s, part of its famous wrought-iron fence with palm leaves was moved here. And the fishing net-shaped gate from the Torre Damià Mateu, which was demolished, was installed in the park in 1968.
• The Gaudí House Museum was not designed by Gaudí. It is a pilot house, and both the park itself and the Sagrada Familia attribute it to Francesc Berenguer. Gaudí lived in it, but he did not design it.
• It is protected as a monument, not as a historical garden. This is a legal nuance that is even misrepresented on official websites, and it is important because it changes the regulations governing interventions on the vegetation.

Until 2013, entry to everything was free. The problem wasn't municipal greed, but rather the numbers: the site came to receive approximately nine million visitors per year to structures made of mortar and ceramics from the early 20th century, in a residential neighborhood that was accessed via narrow streets. On October 13, 2013, the monumental area was restricted, an entrance fee was introduced, and a capacity of 1,400 people per hour was established.

The decision came with counterbalances that almost no one mentions: residents registered in Barcelona enter for free, residents of the six neighboring districts have their own card, and there are two daily time slots, early in the morning and at the end of the day, when the regulated area is open to everyone. The park remains accessible to the local community for twelve hours a day; it is geared towards tourists for the remaining hours.