BuildingCasa Batlló

My husband has a job, which more often than not requires him to work on Christmas day and through most of the Christmas period. Whilst this is the perfect reason to turn down all invitations to spend Christmas with family, it's not the greatest way to celebrate the big day with a 14 hour shift. So last Christmas I decided that we'd have our very own Christmas but just a few days before the rest of the world so I booked a long weekend in Barcelona.

Our hotel - The Gallery is just off the Passeig de Gracia, one of Barcelona's key boulevards where you can find my favourite of the buildings designed by Antoni Gaudi - the almost impossible to pronounce, Casa Batllo. Earlier in the year I had attended a big industry conference in Barcelona and we had the conference gala dinner in the Casa Batllo so I had already had a bit of a look around. Now I wanted to show my husband this little gem and get a bit more time to linger and look around.

As I mentioned, the Casa Batllo is on Passeig de Gracia just a few blocks down the road and on the other side from La Pedrera, the Gaudi building with what looks like Star Wars Storm-troopers on the roof. This is a key street for lovers of Catalan Modernism. I have visited both of the Gaudi buildings and the greater degree of access to the rooms of the Casa Batllo makes it my favourite of the two.

A little bit of History

Gaudi didn't build 43 Passeig de Gracia - in fact there had already been a building there for nearly 30 years before he got his hands on it. The owner in 1900 was a local businessman called Josep Batllo Casanovas (great name, means new house how appropriate). Originally he wanted the whole building knocked down and rebuilt from scratch but he changed his mind and commissioned a refurbishment and new façade instead. Like most of us who buy a house with big plans, sometimes it's wise to scale them down once the builders estimates come in.

Most of the work took place between 1904 and 1906 so the Casa Batllo has been celebrating its 100th birthday for a couple of years - nothing like a good long party. In July 2006 they received a special present - listing as a UNESCO world heritage site. Gaudi's key contributions to the building design were the creation of a completely new façade, restructuring of the interior layout, increasing the size of the lightwell and creating some very funky attic rooms and a rooftop that looks like all the primary school kids in Catlunya were let loose on it with their collage kits.

Getting in

Mid December is probably the quietest time of the year to do anything of a touristic nature in Barcelona and the Casa Batllo is a particularly good example of that. Its not actually a very big building and can easily get jam-packed with tourists. If you try to get into this attraction in summer the lines are long and the wait's interminable. But we strode straight up to the ticket booth without any delay. However, it might have been better to take some time to get over the shock of €16 entry fee. "For goodness sake" I muttered under my breath "I want to visit the house, not buy it!"

The Entrance fee includes a very good and comprehensive audio tour. At some times in the year I think its possible to buy a cut-down ticket that only includes the main floor of the building and excludes the attic and the chimney. However we weren't given any option other than the €16 ticket which, in retrospect, it was probably worth.

Opening hours are 09.00 to 20.00 every day - thats what it says on the website. Do you suppose its really open on Christmas Day? If the building is being used for something else - e.g. a big reception, a wedding, a party - the management reserve the right to change the opening hours. And come to think of it, when I had dinner there in May last year, they must have closed it to the public earlier than normal. I would therefore advise that if you book a trip to Barcelona and you absolutely definitely want to see this building, ring ahead and make 100% sure that it will be open. It's Spain - things dont always run to plan.

Taking the Tour

Its worth knowing that not all of the building can be visited - part of the building is offices for companies and there are people living and or working in the building on the upper floors. Whilst it's a fantastic place, I can't imagine that popping out for lunch and struggling down the stairs filled with tourists would be much fun.

As you enter, you get the first hint that there won't be many straight lines in the building. The downstairs lobby has curved walls that are a bit like a cave. In front of you is a magnificent curved wooden staircase rising up to the first floor. The staircase has a frilled edge that makes it look a bit like the backbone of a dinosaur or other giant creature. There are some spectacular knobs - are they called newel posts or something like that? - at the top and bottom of the stairs. These are giant beads of amber glass wrapped inside curved metal swirly cages. Fantastic.

The stairs deposit you in the hallway of La Planta Noble - the grand floor or the main floor of the building. Turning to the right you go into a little room called the Fireplace Room, which has the most Hobbit-like fireplace that I've ever seen. The fireplace is shaped like a mushroom and there are seats inside on either side of the fire. From what I recall of the audio-guide, the seat is wider on one side than the other to leave room for a chaperone to sit in with any courting couple.

The next room is the main living room and this is the room behind the balcony façade. It has movable wooden dividers that can be left in place to make three smaller rooms or they can be folded back to make one giant room. The windows can also be folded back to leave the room with a giant balcony effect. The ceiling in this room has some amazing swirled textures around the light they look like water flowing down a plug hole but upside down. From the windows you can look out over the Passeig de Gracia, wave at the tourists and pull faces to spoil their photographs - after all, youve paid €16 to get in, they're just standing on the street.

Before the sense of grandeur gets too much for you, turn around and go back the way you came - we are off to look at the back of the building.

The main room at the back of the building on this floor is the dining room. Again, Gaudi worked hard to achieve a sense of "bringing the outside in" as the design folks like to say on the TV. The dining room doors open out onto a large terrace, which completely fills the space behind the building. Go out and turn back to look at the building - there are some more relaxed and fun touches on the back rather than the grand and slightly more formal façade at the front. Big flowers made out of broken plates and other pottery adorn the back of the building. There are little balconies on the higher floors with flowers growing in pots. At the far end of the terrace is a water feature again made from broken pots.

When you are out on the terrace balcony you can't help but be shocked by some of the buildings surrounding the Casa Batllo. To the left and behind are some utterly hideous buildings, which probably date to the 1960s or 70s. They are big grey boxes without any redeeming features. Looking to the right there is a real mish-mash of odd buildings and this has lead this block of the Passeig de Gracia to be named the "Manzana da Discordia" which I thought meant "Apple of Discord" but one website I looked at called it the "Block of Discord". Let's not worry about the translation - the point is that its all a bit of a mess. Some of the buildings are beautiful but there are some 'carbuncles' amongst them. Let's blame Franco (or the town planner) - between the two they seem to be responsible for everything bad if you ever ask a Catalan.

Back into the building and you can pop into the shop at the side of the dining room or continue on to get the lift or start the climb up to the attic. We took the stairs - I'm not a fan of creaky old lifts and there were more things to see on the way up. The staircase winds around the Light-well - the space inside the building through which light tunnels in from above and illuminates the inner rooms. The tiling on the light-well is in shades of blue that vary from dark blue at the top down to much paler white and blues at the bottom. Gaudi was playing games with the light and the tiles to try to give the effect that the tiles were the same colour all the way down the well.

The Attic

After all the bright colours and irregular lines of the main building, the attics are a real surprise. They are painted white and the space is broken up by a succession of high arches that reminded me of the inside of a very austere church or monastery. Some people say that the attics make them think of being inside the belly of a giant beast such as a whale or a dragon - in fact the largest room on this floor is called the Dragons Belly Room. I suspect some people maybe stayed up too late and drank too much! The attics were used for storage and for laundries - a lot of these high ceilings were designed so the washing could be lifted up and dried and there are areas designed to drag air into the building and other rooms are for heating the laundry.

The Roof

The staircase to the roof brings visitors out near the front façade. My husband doesn't like heights so I made him very nervous by going as close to the edge as I could. You can just about see down onto the street below. Next take a walk beside the chimneys. These are smaller and more brightly coloured than those of La Pedrera and look like soldiers standing to attention on the roof. Most of the surfaces are decorated with Gaudi's characteristic broken pottery mosaic. When you've taken lots of photos and had enough of the roof, return to the down-staircase and head back down to the exit.

Do I like it? Would I recommend it?

I think everyone, even those with only a passing interest in Gaudi, should see this building. But not when it's too full or too hot. Go off-peak and take your time to really soak it up. You can see more of this building than La Pedrera and its finished, unlike the Sagrada Familla. For me its the perfect Gaudi building and, despite the price of entrance, I would still go back for another look.

My only reservation would be with respect to access for those with restricted mobility. There is a lift but the line is long and I'm not sure that it would be accessible through the usual entrance. If you have trouble getting around, phone ahead and check.