Casa Batllo

On Thursday, on our way to the Old Port for dinner, we walked by the Casa Batllo to see how long the line was.  I decided that I didn't want to rush my way through it, so we came up with a plan for Friday morning.  My friends were Gaudi'd out, and wanted to take a bus ride through the city, so I got up early to go to the Casa Batllo while they took their bus ride.  We agreed to meet up later for lunch.

The Casa Batllo (pronounced "by-yo," I don't know what happened to the sound of the T), is one of Gaudi's major achievements.  It is delightfully weird and at the same time there are parts of it that are pure genius.  I remained in a state of joyful awe the entire tour.  Here we go...

The house from the outside.  The balconies look like skulls, or bones, or masks, or whatever you see them to be.  One thing that was hard for me to get a picture of were all the little tiles covering the entire facade.  They were blue and green and yellow and oh so beautiful.  The roof is meant to look like part of a dragon.

Here it is at dusk.  So cool!!!

Inside, the rail along the staircase is meant to look like the spine of a dinosaur.  Gaudi even studied the shape of the human hand, and carved the hand rail to be perfectly grooved to fit the hand.  All door and window handles in the house also fit perfectly into the human palm.  You can barely see it, but the wall was painted to look like fish scales.

 Before central heating, fireplaces in Europe were often made to be big enough for someone (or several people) to sit in them, as a means to keep warm.  Gaudi designed his fireplace like that, with two benches facing one another and the fireplace in the middle.  Some think that the shape of the fireplace is like a mushroom, others think it looks like a turtleshell.  What do you think?

 The main living room was such a sight to see!  No straight lines, of course.  Beautiful carved wood, and plenty of stained glass to bring various colors and light into the room.

 The ceiling was shaped like a seashell.

 In the dining room, there were two tall pillars between the main room and the doorway.  They had pastel scales painted on them, and no one knows exactly why the pillars were placed where they were and painted as they were.  Gaudi left so much to the imagination.

 Out in the courtyard, there were stone flower pots made of tiled mosaics.

 Looking at the backside of the building.

 Back inside, I began the climb to the top.  Each door was uniquely shaped.  You know I was loving it!!!

 Now here was one of the neatest parts of the whole building, and the part where I began saying Gaudi was a genius.  He had studied light and its affect on a room.  He believed that people mistakenly made windows too big to flood rooms with light.  He created the apartment building to have the windows placed at the right spot to allow enough light in...but not too much to whitewash the room.  However, in order to create the right light effect, more natural sunlight needed to come in from another source.  So he created a lightwell, basically a vertical hallway with a sunlight at the top of it, and windows down the course of it that would allow secondary sunlight into the apartments.  The windows at the top of the lightwell were smaller, to let in less light, and windows at the bottom were larger to let in more.

As well, he made the lightwell to look like an ocean, and created an effect with colored tiles to make it look like you were sinking in the ocean as you went down, or rising to the surface as you went up.  So the tiles at the top were a dark blue shade, and lighter as they went down.

 He used wavy glass instead of walls to create even more of a water effect.

 Seriously, that lightwell was so amazing to stare at.  You'd look up and think you were in an elevator in the ocean!  I wish I could have gone in the apartments to see what the light from the windows looked like.

 In the attic, he wanted to create a place that was pure white and pristine (it was where his servants did laundry, and it still smelled like soap!), and that looked like a rib cage.

 Up on the roof were more unique chimneys, and the dragon hump.

I went to the gift shop and um...spent alot of money.  Ha.  I am so fascinated by Gaudi!  I look forward to returning to Barcelona and seeing more of his works!  

 And since I had already taken several photos with these street lamps, I decided to take another with the Casa in it.  Oh Barcelona, how I love you!  Even your street lamps are beautiful.