Casa Batlló, Barcelona

Casa Batlló is the remarkable building directly before you, designed by Antoni Gaudí and known locally as Casa dels ossos, or House of Bones. Its flowing stonework, irregular openings, and broken-ceramic mosaic give the façade an almost living quality. Gaudí created this work in the modernisme català tradition, reshaping an earlier house rather than replacing it.

The transformation took place from 1904 to 1907 for the textile industrialist Josep Batlló i Casanovas, whose name the building carries. Look at the façade’s rippling surface and the elaborate balconies: very little here follows a straight path. The roof forms a sweeping arch, while the mosaic shifts from warm golden orange into greenish blues.

These details belong to a larger team effort. Josep Maria Jujol and Joan Rubió i Bellver helped with the façade, the Badia brothers made the ironwork, Casas and Bardés handled the carpentry, and Sebastià Ribó produced major ceramic elements. Inside, the loft contains sixty catenary arches.

Their repeated curves create an animal-like rib structure beneath the roof. Casa Batlló began as a building from 1877, yet Gaudí’s intervention turned it into one of Barcelona’s most unmistakable works.