Private Living in a Gaudí House: from La Pedrera to Palau Güell

Overview

What to expect

Imagine living in one of the houses designed by Gaudí. You will start with a la Pedrera, where you will travel back in the early 20th century and see what an apartment used to look like back then. You will walk down Passeig de Gracia and see the myriad of luxury houses where anything imagined was then reproduced: Gaudí’s Casa Batlló, but also Casa Ametller and Casa Lleó Morera. You will end at the Palau Güell – one of the first buildings designed by Gaudí and where his main patron lived, Eusebi Güell.

La Pedrera – Casa Milà (the Quarry)

This residential building was built by Gaudí for the Milà family and finished in 1911. Its sculptured form has made it a reference piece and it has been declared World Heritage by UNESCO. At the time, people were not really convinced with the peculiar building and thought it looked like a quarry and, since then, this is what everyone has called it: La Pedrera.

In the attic there is an exhibition called Espai Gaudí which has models and technical explanations of his buildings.

The rooftop is just extraordinary – the chimney stacks look like soldiers and it is all wavy with stairs up and down – in total harmony with the wavy façade!

An apartment has been restored and fully furnished in its original style. An example of how the well-to-do lived at the beginning of the 20th century.

Passeig de Gràcia

In the early 20th century, all along Passeig de Gràcia lived the wealthy Barcelonans. Still now you can feel the luxury with all the design shops along with major banks and stock exchange. But what is really worthy is what has been kept from the Gaudí period: the modernista lamppost and Gaudí’s tiles for the pavement, as well as a myriad of grand buildings like La Pedrera and Casa Batlló, but also buildings from other great modernista architects like Casa Ametller and Casa Lleó Morera.

Palau Güell

In this modernista building, the simplicity of the façades both front and back contrasts with the magnificence of the exquisitely decorated interior. You will be surprised by the luxury of detail that reflect the taste and originality of the architect.

The interior revolves around a spectacular central salon crowned by a parabolic dome which projects above the roof terrace in a cone and is perforated with small circles, which, in the light of day, make it look like a planetarium.

It is one of Gaudí’s first greatest projects, where you will see some prototypes of details that he later used in other buildings. For instance, the terrace with its conical chimneys and vents, like fir trees, are probably the prototypes of the later warrior chimneys on the roof of the Pedrera. He also used the trencadís, or broken ceramic mosaic, for the first time. Decoration he would later use on all kinds of surfaces and which was widely used during the Modernista period.

Reviews

Check our reviews and see what our customers say about this tour.

Posted by Erika - 07 Aug 2017

"Gaudi Tour — Park Guell, Sagrada Familia, and La Pedrera" 5/5 stars

We had a tour with Irina. She was clearly very knowledgeable and she was fantastic at sharing her enthusiasm for Guadi with my family (including two high school daughters). We were a bit rushed on time though, and I wish we could have spent more time at Park Guell. My family generally agreed that we could have skipped La Pedrera. While it was definitely interesting and worth seeing, we probably could have done that on our own rather than packing it into the tour. Sagrada Familia and Park Guell are not to be missed, though. Thanks, Irina!

Visited June 2017. Reviewed on tripadvisor by Erika Kremer

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