Location:
Carrer d’Olot
Tel. 93-413 24 00
Subway: Lesseps
Open: daily
Closed: Dec 25- 26(am), Jan 1 & 6
Park Güell (in Catalan: Parc Güell, in Castilian: Parque Güell,
although the original spelling was Park Güell) is a large urban park
with architectural elements located in the Gràcia district of the
city of Barcelona, on the side facing the Mediterranean Sea. Mount
Carmel, not far from Tibidabo. Originally intended to be an
urbanization, it was designed by architect Antoni Gaudí, the
greatest exponent of Catalan modernism, commissioned by businessman
Eusebi Güell. Built between 1900 and 1914, it proved to be a
commercial failure and was sold to the Barcelona City Council in
1922, having been opened as a public park in 1926. In 1969 it was
named Historic Artistic Monument of Spain, and in 1984 it was
classified by UNESCO as World Heritage Site, included in the Works
of Antoni Gaudí website. On the park grounds, in a house where Gaudí
lived for almost twenty years, the Gaudí House-Museum has been
operating since 1963, whose collection includes personal objects and
works by Gaudí and some of his collaborators.
The park was
conceived by Güell and Gaudí as a structured complex where, within
an incomparable setting of natural beauty, luxury housing would be
located, with all the technological advances of the time and
finishes of great artistic quality. It is not known exactly what
Güell and Gaudí intended to achieve, as there are no records left in
this regard, but it seems obvious that the park was intended for a
select group and not for the general public, and that it is filled
with references to ideas, fantasies and ideals that were important
to both, such as political Catalanism and the Catholic religion, in
any case with a certain mysterious character due to the taste of the
time for riddles and riddles.
Park Güell is a reflection of
Gaudí's artistic plenitude; belongs to his naturalist stage (1900s),
a period in which the Catalan architect perfected his personal
style, drawing inspiration from the organic forms of nature and
putting into practice a series of new structural solutions
originating from his analysis of ruled geometry. To this he added
great creative freedom and imaginative ornamental creation; Starting
from a certain baroque style, his works acquire great structural
richness, with shapes and volumes devoid of rationalist rigidity or
any classical premise. However, although it contains several
characteristic elements of the final phase of Gaudí's career, such
as the preference for inclined columns and the use of trencadís, the
park presents a mixture of elements from different styles
(Romanesque, Baroque, Doric, pre-Roman, etc. .) which refers to his
first works. One of the most striking features of Park Güell is the
contrast between the textures and colors of the different building
materials (bright, multicolored ceramics versus rustic brown stone),
so appreciated by Catalan modernist architects.
The park owes its name to Eusebi Güell, Count of
Güell, a rich Catalan businessman, member of an influential bourgeois
family in Barcelona, who was the one who conceived of building a luxury
urbanization on the slope of a hill near the city of Barcelona, then
known as Montanha Pelada (currently called Monte Carmelo). To this end,
Güell acquired the two adjacent farms that occupied it, Can Muntaner de
Dalt (1899) and Can Coll i Pujol (1902), the first of which was owned by
Salvador de Samà (mayor of Barcelona between 1905-1906 and 1910 -1911).
Güell lived between 1906 and 1918 (date of his death) in the large
country house belonging to one of the farms, Casa Larrard (formerly Casa
Muntaner de Dalt), located within the park, which Gaudí remodeled
between 1906 and 1922.
The location chosen by Güell for the
urbanization was open, calm and with views over the city and the sea,
and the distance to the center of Barcelona ensured considerable privacy
and distance from the hustle and bustle and pollution characteristic of
young industrial cities. The count had experience with British labor
organization, as was seen in his project for a workers' colony, the
Colónia Güell in Santa Coloma de Cervelló, and he had in mind a project
in the style of the garden cities designed by Ebenezer Howard (which is
also clear in the initial spelling Park Güell). For the garden areas,
Güell was also inspired by the Jardins de la Fontaine in the city of
Nîmes, where he lived in his youth.
Güell commissioned the
project from the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, with whom he had a
fruitful personal and professional relationship since 1878, when he was
impressed by his talent upon seeing architectural drawings made by him
at that year's Universal Exhibition in Paris. The count was Gaudí's main
patron throughout his career, commissioning several of his best-known
works from him, such as the Güell Palace and the Güell Colony Crypt.
Along with Gaudí, some of his usual collaborators worked in the park,
such as Josep Maria Jujol, Francesc Berenguer, Joan Rubió and Llorenç
Matamala. The works were carried out by contractor Josep Pardo i
Casanovas.
Work began in 1900, but despite the advantages and
reasonable prices offered, the project was a commercial failure. The
reasons behind this are not known for sure, but there are numerous
theories. One of the most frequently mentioned is that the people of
Barcelona considered that the area, then little urbanized and without
public transport, was too far from the center of Barcelona; however,
this did not stop the upper-class neighborhood of La Salud, adjacent to
Park Güell, from thriving. Another theory put forward is that Count
Güell was a Freemason and intended to establish a Masonic lodge, which
would have drastically reduced the number of potential buyers; However,
if this is true (there is no evidence that Güell was a Freemason), it is
puzzling that no Freemason took advantage of the opportunity. A third
theory argues that Park Güell was too openly Catalanist and that this
alienated potential buyers at a time when the Catalan bourgeoisie feared
a workers' revolution and wanted to remain in the good graces of the
central government in Madrid and its protective army. But there are
still other possibilities; The prospect of living with Count Güell in a
closed community in which he set the rules may not have pleased many of
his friends and acquaintances, and it is possible that after Gaudí
completed the construction of the entrance pavilions (1903), some
potential buyers (or their wives) decided they didn't want to live in a
community whose entrance looked like something out of a fairy tale.
Of the 60 triangular plots measuring 1,000–1,200 m² for housing
construction (occupying around 35% of the park's total area), only two
were sold; one of them is the Torre Rosa, built to serve as a model
house for urbanization and where the architect lived between 1906 and
1925, designed by Francesc Berenguer (1904); the other is Casa Trias,
owned by the lawyer Martí Trias i Domènech, a friend of Güell and Gaudí,
designed by the architect Juli Batllevell (1906). Güell, Gaudí and Trias
moved to Park Güell in the same year (1906) and got along well, although
Gaudí avoided visiting the lawyer on holidays, as his house was often
visited on those occasions by a good friend of the Trias family, Pepita
Moreu, who was Gaudí's frustrated love in the 1880s.
When he
realized that his project was a failure, Güell decided to open the park
on a limited basis, allowing the general public to walk freely within it
for a small admission fee and hosting large social events, such as the
First Congress Catalan Language International (1906) and a major
fundraising event to help the victims of the most recent floods in
Catalonia (1907). Works continued in the common areas of the
urbanization until they were stopped in 1914, after the start of the
First World War. After the death of Count Güell (1918), his heirs sold
the park to the Municipality of Barcelona in 1922 to convert it into a
public park, and it was opened as a public park in April 1926.
In
1969, Park Güell was named a Historic Artistic Monument of Spain, and in
1984 it was classified by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, included in
the Works of Antoni Gaudí site. Between 1987 and 1994, the park was
restored by Elies Torres i Tur and Josep Antoni Martínez i Lapeña, with
the collaboration of architect and historian Joan Bassegoda. A project
to improve the northern slope of the mountain – which was not included
in Gaudí's project – remains pending, especially the area of the Fonte
de San Salvador de Horta and the Castillo d'en Frey, a stately mansion
built in the 1920s and demolished. in the 1960s, from which only traces
of the walls remain.
The park, with an area of 17.18 ha, is located on Devonian
terrain formed by strata of slate and limestone. When Güell bought
the land, it was practically deforested - as its name, Naked
Mountain - indicated, with the exception of one or two pine trees, a
couple of carob trees and low bushes. Gaudí ordered new vegetation
to be planted, choosing above all indigenous Mediterranean species,
those that best adapted to the terrain: pine, carob, holm oak,
eucalyptus, palm, cypress, fig, almond, plum, mimosa, magnolia,
agave, lentisk, ivy, maqui, executioner, retama, cistus, lavender,
sage, among others. In order to minimize the intrusion of the roads,
overcoming the slope of the mountain without resorting to large
excavations, Gaudí designed them as structures protruding from the
slope, supported by porticos, support walls and viaducts designed
using rustic stone extracted from the site. Some of the roads are
also flanked by columns, walls and other architectural elements,
also designed with rustic stone extracted from the site, in order to
integrate them perfectly into the landscape.
The central area
of the park consists of an immense, partially suspended oval-shaped
open square, delimited on the south side by an undulating bench with
panoramic views over the city. Under the square is the hypostyle
room, a kind of large porch supported by dozens of columns
reminiscent of classical antiquity, where a monumental staircase
with three fountains ends that leads to the main entrance of the
park, with its characteristic pavilions of the purest style.
Gaudinian. On an isolated hill at a high point, Gaudí also built a
monument in the shape of Calvary.
Several structures in the
park, including the vaults of the entrance pavilions, the ceiling of
the hypostyle room and the undulating bench, are composed of
prefabricated elements that were later assembled in place and
connected to each other, an innovative construction technique for
the time. Equally innovative is the fact that the undulating bench
and many of the surfaces of the hypostyle room, the staircase and
the entrance pavilions are covered with pieces of ceramic and glass
forming a kind of colorful mosaic, typical of Catalan modernism,
known as trencadís. The use of broken tiles is a traditional Catalan
decorative technique, which Gaudí decided to use in response to the
advertisements of the time, made with tiles. It is said that on
Gaudí's recommendation, workers had the habit of collecting pieces
of ceramics and glass that they found in the trash on the way to
work, and it became customary for Barcelonans to pile up the broken
ceramics, crockery and porcelain next to the park. to be recycled in
construction. Still, park records indicate that large quantities of
mosaic were brought from Valencia, and a magazine from the time
commented that it wasn't every day that thirty men were seen
breaking tiles into pieces and another thirty putting them back
together.
A parallel project to Park Güell and an excellent
example of a garden designed by Gaudí are the Artigas Gardens in La
Pobla de Lillet (1903-1910), commissioned by the textile
industrialist Joan Artigas i Alart. Workers who had worked in Park
Güell intervened in this work, carrying out a project similar to
that of the Barcelona park, so the stylistic and structural
similarities are evident between the two. Just like Park Güell,
Gaudí designed gardens that are fully integrated into nature, with a
set of buildings with organic lines that integrate perfectly with
the natural contour.
Gaudí located the main entrance in the lowest part of the mountain
(Carrer d'Olot), closest to the urban center. As access, he designed a
monumental entrance with a pair of life-size mechanical gazelles, which
was never built. In its place, a simple wooden gate was placed, which
was replaced in 1965 by a wrought iron gate representing palmetto leaves
transferred from Casa Vicens, one of Gaudí's first works.] Originally,
there was only a secondary entrance to the park. on the Carretera del
Carmel, but currently there are also secondary entrances on Baixada de
la Glòria, on Avinguda del Santuari de Sant Josep de la Muntanya, on
Avinguda del Coll del Portell and on Carrer d'Olot.
On both sides
of the entrance gate are two pavilions dedicated to park services. These
are integrated into the park's outer wall, which should have surrounded
the entire enclosure but was only partially built, consisting of a brick
wall covered with rustic stone extracted from the site and topped with
white and red ceramic pieces featuring medallions. with the inscriptions
"Park" and "Güell". Both the wall and the pavilions were built between
1900 and 1903.
Following the entrance gate is a 400 m² lobby
designed to organize access to the park, on the sides of which are two
cave-like service areas, built by Gaudí by increasing and reinforcing
pre-existing caves on site; the one on the left was used as a warehouse,
while the one on the right was used as a garage and was large enough to
accommodate up to four carriages. The latter consists of a
semi-spherical room supported by a central chalice-shaped column with a
structure that resembles the feet of an elephant, similar to that found
in the crypt of the Monastery of Sant Pere de Rodes, a possible place of
inspiration for the architect. This room also has the particularity of
propagating sound along its walls, so it is possible for two people at
its ends to talk to each other with their backs turned.
The entrance pavilions are in the purest Gaudinian style, with an
organic structure reflecting Gaudí's profound study of nature. Due to
their formal and chromatic fantasy, it was suggested that they sought to
evoke the house in the tale of Hansel and Gretel, whose operatic
version, by Engelbert Humperdinck, was being presented at the Liceu in
1901. Made with rustic stone masonry extracted from the site , stand out
for their hyperbolic paraboloid-shaped vaults covered with brightly
colored ceramics and topped with mushroom-shaped ventilation chimneys
(Amanita muscaria), in which Gaudí used the vaulting technique, which
consists of superimposing several layers of bricks with mortar.
The larger pavilion, currently part of the Barcelona History Museum, has
a more conventional appearance and was intended for the doorman, who
lived in this building with his family. It has a lobby, a dining room, a
living room and a kitchen on the ground floor, four bedrooms on the
first floor and an attic with two crenellated terraces and a spiral
staircase that gives access to a balcony. located around the ventilation
chimney. The appearance of the smaller pavilion is marked by a large
window with wrought iron shutters that resemble the eye of an insect and
by a 30 m high helical tower covered with white and blue ceramics
forming a checkerboard pattern. It has a large reception room equipped
with a telephone on the ground floor, where residents could come and
receive their visits, and more rooms on the first floor, with access to
two crenellated terraces and an exterior staircase that gives access to
a viewpoint located at the base of the tower. The tower is crowned by an
open wrought iron structure and a four-armed cross aligned with the four
cardinal points. The original cross was destroyed in 1936 during the
Spanish Civil War and later replaced by a not very faithful copy of the
original, and the tower had to be reinforced with metal bars in 1952 to
avoid worsening the cracking that had been occurring.
Gaudí's
design intrigued many and gave rise to numerous comments about the
architect's intentions. One day a lady visiting the works exclaimed "I
would like to know what the hell Don Antoni is planning to do here", to
which Gaudí (a devout Catholic) replied while pointing to the cross at
the top of the tower of the smaller pavilion: "My dear lady , where
there is a cross the devil is not present". On another occasion, two
passers-by noticed the profusion of pieces of ceramic used to cover the
pavilions and commented sarcastically to each other that they were the
remains of structures made by the Moors in the Middle Ages (the Moors
often used mosaics); When this reached Gaudí's ears, he commented: "I'm
used to these kinds of jokes and, I must admit, some of them are quite
funny."
From the main entrance hall leads to a monumental double-section
staircase with three flights of stairs and covered with trencadís that
leads to the hypostyle room, built between 1900 and 1903. The staircase
is located between crenellated walls, the walls of which are covered
with pieces of multicolored ceramics forming a kind of checkerboard
pattern with white rectangles and colored squares, on whose alternately
convex and concave surfaces the sunlight creates a remarkable visual
effect. In its central area it houses three fountains with sculptural
groups also covered with trencadís, in whose symbolism scholars see
different types of references due to the complex iconography applied by
Gaudí.
In the first source, a circle, a square and a compass are
discernible, albeit somewhat cryptically. Josep Maria Carandell
interprets them as Masonic symbols (the world and the Masonic Square and
Compasses, respectively), but others see in them an allusion to
Pythagoras, whose name is associated with the pythia in the Temple of
Apollo in Delphi, who according to legend prophesied not only his birth
but also that he would be the most beautiful and wise of men and a great
benefit to humanity. The second source contains the triangular head of a
reptile on the coat of arms of Catalonia inscribed in a hexagon,
surrounded by eucalyptus flowers. Quite possibly, the head belongs to a
serpent, in allusion to medicine or to the serpent that Moses carried on
his staff (Nejustán), or to the sardon (Timon lepidus), a reptile common
in Catalonia, whose males have a triangular head (Gaudí often
incorporated animals and plants he found at the construction site into
his designs).
The third fountain is in the shape of a
multicolored reptile known as El Drac, which has become the park's
emblem and one of the symbols of the city of Barcelona. El Drac may
represent the city of Nîmes (a reptile is present in its coat of arms),
where Güell lived in his youth, or the alchemical salamander, which
symbolizes the element of fire, but is generally interpreted as a
dragon, possibly the mythological Python of the Temple of Apollo at
Delphi. On February 6, 2007, El Drac was vandalized with an iron bar by
three young men, suffering damage to his head and back. However, it was
easily restored as the damage suffered was minor and it was possible to
recover most of the pieces of ceramic that had been torn off. Just
behind El Drac is a tripod-shaped sculpture with a rock on top, which
could be an allusion to the tripod used by the pythia in the Temple of
Apollo in Delphi. On the top landing of the staircase, beneath the
central column of the hypostyle room, there is a resting place in the
form of a small recess, the edge of which is decorated with a pattern
reminiscent of the mosaics used by Gaudí on the exterior of Casa Vicens:
orange flowers on a green background.
On the left side of the
staircase is Casa Larrard, the former residence of Count Güell, where
the CEIP Baldiri Reixac school currently operates, while on the opposite
side is the Jardim de Austria, designed in the 1960s by Lluís Riudor i
Carol.
At the top of the staircase is the hypostyle room or room of the
hundred columns, a type of large porch originally intended to house an
open-air market for urbanization, built between 1906 and 1913. The room
contains 86 Doric columns with around 6 m high, built with rubble and
mortar imitating marble and covered with smooth white trencadís to a
height of 1.8 m, a practical adaptation taking into account the intended
use of the space but which is out of place in this type of column.
Furthermore, contrary to what would be expected in Doric order columns,
they have an octagonal abacus and the outer columns are slightly
inclined towards the interior, acting as buttresses. At the top of the
exterior columns there is also a frieze with gargoyles in the shape of a
lion's head, as well as small reliefs in the shape of a drop of water on
the abacus. The ceiling is made up of semi-spherical vaults covered with
white trencadís, prefabricated with reinforced ceramics, bricks and
metal frames held together with Portland cement mortar. Although these
metallic reinforcements increase the resistance of the structure, their
corrosion was the main cause of deterioration of many of the park's
structures, as they were made with ordinary metal without corrosion
resistance. Architects of Gaudí's generation made this type of error
because they were experimenting with materials and construction
techniques that were not yet fully understood at the time, but which
would later be perfected in the modern technique of reinforced concrete.
The back wall is made up of a pre-existing retaining wall in unworked
rustic stone that Gaudí incorporated into his design. In this wall there
was a natural spring (although sealed), whose pure, magnesium-rich water
Count Güell sold from 1913 onwards under the Sarva brand.
Among
the forest of equally spaced columns, Gaudí created three larger spaces
by removing some columns, possibly with the aim of organizing the
vendors' stalls who periodically came to sell their products there. In
the vacant spaces left in the ceiling by the suppressed columns there
are four large colored rosettes measuring almost 3 m in diameter
representing the Sun during the four seasons of the year, surrounded by
fourteen smaller ones with designs of swirls and spirals, representing
stars or moons. These rosettes were designed by Josep Maria Jujol, who,
in addition to the usual ceramic and glass fragments, also used unusual
materials, such as a fragment of a doll. In the center of the larger
rosettes there are metal hooks that were probably used to hang lamps if
it was necessary to illuminate the space at night.
The large oval
square above the hypostyle room is not paved, as the rainwater it
collects is drained and channeled through pipes inside the columns to a
1,200 m³ cistern beneath the hypostyle room, to be used for irrigation.
of the park. In order to filter the water, Gaudí filled the space
between the vaults with several layers of stones of increasingly smaller
diameter, using fine gravel in the last layer, which serves as the
square's pavement. However, due to the accumulation of mud inside the
cistern and the consequent clogging of the pipes inside the columns,
during modern restoration works this system was replaced by drainage
pipes that direct the water to the pipes inside the columns. If the
volume of water accumulated in the cistern exceeds a certain limit, the
excess water is drained through the staircase fountains. Gaudí paid
close attention to people's needs and carefully studied his
constructions so that they were pleasant, comfortable and efficient, but
he also saw his works as having value in themselves regardless of the
presence of people, which is why the cistern has columns, capitals and
carefully designed arches despite not being open to the public,
difficult to access, lacking natural lighting and often filled with
water.
The hypostyle room is probably one of Gaudí's most
controversial creations, as it goes completely against the conviction
acquired over the years by the Catalan architect that nature is the best
model and that straight lines and right angles are unnatural and
unnecessary. Some scholars claim that Gaudí was inspired by the
pan-Germanism in vogue in Europe before the First World War (at that
time the Germans favored the Doric style), but others believe that Gaudí
intended to denigrate the neoclassical style prevalent in public
buildings in the 19th century, even going as far as to classify it as a
sad disfigurement of the Doric style and a cruel and unnecessary satire
on classical architecture. In any case, many agree that it is the least
original element of Park Güell.
Above the hypostyle room sits a huge open unpaved square of oval
shape, known as the Greek Theatre, built between 1906 and 1913. The
southern half of the square is supported by the columns of the hypostyle
room and bounded by an undulating bench about 150 m long covered with
trencadís, built between 1909 and 1913, while the other half is based on
the mountainside. The square was supposedly intended to host a Greek
theater, with the stands located on the north side so that spectators
could enjoy the view of the city and the sea from behind the stage.
However, Gaudí designed portable benches in iron and wood instead of
taking advantage of the slope of the hill to create permanent seats
similar to ancient Greek theaters, and there is no evidence that there
was any concern with acoustics in the square's design. It is possible
that Count Güell had doubts about what he intended to do with this space
or that he changed his mind when he realized that the project was a
failure, seeing it as the ideal place to exercise his role as
benefactor; This would explain not only the absence of a permanent
theater, but also the size of the square and why it had such a long
bench. It is very likely that several theater plays were presented in
this space, although there are no records to prove this, but it is
certain that Güell allowed the use of this square for large social
events and fundraising.
The undulating bench is formed by a
sequence of concave and convex modules measuring 1.5 m, with an
ergonomic design adapted to the human body, conceived by Gaudí based on
the study of the body of a seated worker and built using only three
types of pre-assembled parts. manufactured. The bench has a panoramic
view over the city and its curves form several recesses, allowing people
sitting on them to talk in relative privacy despite the size of the
square. The seat is covered with white trencadís and is inclined in
order to direct rainwater to the back of the seat, where there are
openings that drain the water to the outside, but the back of the seat
and the outside of the seat are covered with colorful trencadís designed
by Josep Maria Jujol, who used mainly abstract motifs such as waves,
circles and arabesques, but also some figurative elements such as vines,
leaves, flowers, shells, stars and the signs of the zodiac. The
trencadís was built essentially with pieces of mosaic, crockery and
bottles, with Jujol even using his own dinner service (with painted
angels) and some pieces provided by Martí Trias, but the rounded pieces
on the top of the bench and the ledge on the back of the seat were made
specifically for this purpose. On these, before baking, Jujol inscribed
branches, leaves, abstract designs and a series of words or phrases that
took more than 50 years to be discovered and remain a mystery. The
replacement of some of these pieces over the years has made them even
more difficult to understand, but the phrases are mostly allegorical
references to the Virgin Mary. Parts of the bank were restored a few
years ago, having lost some of the original quality.
On the north
side of the square there were still some caves that Gaudí expanded to
serve as a resting place, but most of them have since been sealed off.
The 3 km of roads intended to serve the houses inside the park were
designed by Gaudí as structures protruding from the hillside with
porticoes or supporting walls and viaducts wide enough to allow
carriages to pass, with independent pedestrian paths under the arcades
formed by these , in order to separate pedestrian traffic from vehicle
traffic. Gaudí strived to ensure that the roads integrated perfectly
into the landscape, so the viaducts, porticos and supporting walls, as
well as the walls and columns in the form of trees, stalactites and
geometric shapes that flank the roads, were designed using rustic stone
extracted from the site, of very variable sizes and shapes, minimizing
the intrusion of roads and integrating them perfectly into the
landscape. Plants were also distributed along the top of the porticos so
that the structures blended in with the vegetation, and originally there
were wrought iron railings on the sides of some of the roads (which have
now disappeared). The park's main path, known as Caminho do Rosário
because it is flanked by a row of stone spheres shaped like rosary
beads, starts from the oval square and crosses the park transversely. It
is ten meters wide and was built on an ancient Roman road that led to
Sant Cugat del Vallès.
The fact that Gaudí rejected the use of
straight lines and right angles as he considered them unnatural led to
all the vaults of the porticos being curved and inclined columns
predominating. However, despite the conceptual similarities, the
viaducts have different structural solutions, inspired by different
architectural styles: the lower one (Viaduto do Museu) in Gothic style,
the intermediate one (Viaduto da Alfarrobeira) in baroque style and the
upper one (Viaduto das Jardineiras) in Romanesque style. The porticos
and retaining walls also have different shapes, some of them with
columns and arches in the shape of palm tree trunks and branches, like
the retaining wall that limits the oval square on the north side. Among
the ensemble, the portico that surrounds Casa Larrard, the Pórtico da
Lavadeira, stands out, whose walls and ceiling have the shape of an
endless breaking wave supported by a row of inclined interior columns,
whose angles were carefully calculated. in order to correspond to the
theoretical form of greater stability. In front of the interior columns
there is a second row of columns with all different shapes (one of which
is in the shape of a washerwoman, which gave the portico its name) that
supports the plantations that line the road above. At the entrance to
this portico, next to the oval square, there is a wrought iron door in
the shape of "calf's livers", according to a famous phrase by Salvador
Dalí. A second section of the portico, which supports a tight curve of
the road above, features inclined helical columns with funnel-shaped
capitals that blend seamlessly into the roof. Gaudí's concern with
merging the columns, vaults and walls into a continuous surface,
characteristic of the last years of his career, was also used to great
effect in the design of the interior of the Sagrada Familia.
On an isolated hill at a high point on Monte Gaudí initially planned
to install a large stone and wrought iron cross, having later changed
his mind and decided to build the urbanization chapel there. However,
with the failure of the project this became unnecessary, so Gaudí chose
to build a monument in the shape of Calvary, also known as the Hill of
the Three Crosses, on that site. Inspired by the discovery in the park's
precincts of prehistoric caves containing fossil remains, which were
studied by Norbert Font i Sagué, Gaudí conceived Calvary as a megalithic
monument in the style of the Talayotes of the Talayotic culture.
The monument has a polygonal plan, with two symmetrical flights of
stairs leading to the top, where the three crosses are located and from
where you can enjoy an excellent panoramic view of Barcelona. There is a
larger cross, that of Jesus, and two smaller crosses, one of which ends
in the shape of an arrow. The arms of the two "normal" crosses are
aligned with the four cardinal points while the one that ends in an
arrow points towards the sky, which causes a lot of speculation about
its meaning. The original crosses were torn down in 1936 during the
Spanish Civil War and rebuilt in 1939, although their size and design
differ from the originals.
Park Güell was conceived as a complex imbued with strong symbolism,
in which scholars claim to see the most varied types of references due
to the complex iconography applied by Gaudí to the urban project as a
whole, references ranging from political Catalanism to the Catholic
religion. , passing through mythology, history or alchemy. Specifically,
some scholars claim to see references to Freemasonry in the park, which
is unlikely given the deep religious beliefs of both Güell and Gaudí,
and in any case it has never been proven that either of them belonged to
Freemasonry. Another commonly defended interpretation is that the park
is intended to be a reconstruction of Catalonia and that its various
elements are references to its history, culture, architecture and
geography, especially the monumental staircase, where the Catalan
Countries will be represented. Mythology is also a frequently mentioned
source of inspiration, and is at the origin of an interesting theory
defended by scholars such as the architect and historian Joan Bassegoda,
according to which Güell intended to symbolically recreate the Temple of
Apollo in Delphi in the central elements of the park. An argument in
favor of this theory is the fact that years before he used one of the
twelve labors of Hercules as the theme for the intervention carried out
by Gaudí in the Pavilions Güell, and it is known that in Casa Larrard
there were several tapestries depicting scenes from Greek mythology.
Like Park Güell, the Temple of Apollo at Delphi consisted of a
walled area on the side of a hill overlooking the Mediterranean Sea that
included a Greek theater. A sacred road led up the slope to the temple;
the staircase leads from the main entrance to the hypostyle room, a huge
covered space supported by columns reminiscent of classical antiquity
and decorated with rosettes representing the Sun (the symbol of Apollo).
The staircase has three fountains, as many as the steam fountains that
would exist in the Temple of Apollo, and at its top there is a sculpture
in the shape of a tripod with a rock at the top, a possible allusion to
the tripod used by the pythia and the omphalos existing in that
sanctuary. In front of this sculpture is El Drac, whose fountain is fed
by water from the cistern under the hypostyle room; according to legend,
the temple originally belonged to Gaia and was guarded by one of her
sons, the dragon Python, who took the form of a stream that ran down the
slope of the mountain. Apollo defeated Python and buried him under the
sanctuary, where he transformed into a minor god of the underground
waters.
Whatever Güell's intentions were, Gaudí incorporated the
inevitable references to Catholicism, also taking advantage of the
mountain's unevenness (whose altitude varies between 150 and 210 m) to
design a path of spiritual elevation between the main entrance and the
monument to Calvary. , where it was initially planned to build the
urbanization chapel.
In the park grounds, next to the Caminho do Rosario, is the Torre
Rosa, Gaudí's place of residence between 1906 and 1925. Designed by his
collaborator Francesc Berenguer to serve as a model house for the
urbanization (although the project was signed by Gaudí, as he did not
have the title of architect), was put up for sale immediately after its
completion in 1904, but due to the failure of the project it was
acquired by Gaudí in 1906, who moved there with his father, Francesc
Gaudí i Serra (died in 1906 at age 93) and his niece, Rosa Egea Gaudí
(died in 1912 at age 36). Gaudí remained at the house, sometimes with
friends such as Llorenç Matamala, until he moved to the Sagrada Família
workshop at the end of 1925, and died in June of the following year.
After his death, the house was put up for sale, having been acquired by
the Italian couple Chiappo Arietti, with the proceeds going towards the
continuation of works on the Sagrada Família, in accordance with the
wishes expressed by the architect in his will. In 1960, after the
couple's death, the house was purchased from their heirs by the
Associació Amigos de Gaudí with the aim of founding a museum dedicated
to the architect, which would be inaugurated on September 28, 1963. In
1992, the management of the Gaudí House-Museum was transferred to the
foundation responsible for the construction of the Sagrada Família,
starting to contribute financially to this project.
The museum is
surrounded by a garden, where you can see a pergola formed by parabolic
arches designed by Gaudí and pieces from other works by the architect,
such as a section of the wrought iron fence representing palmetto leaves
from Casa Vicens, wrought iron grilles from Casa Milà, a wrought iron
cross from Portal Miralles, a window box from Casa Batlló and a copy of
the sculpture "Cosmos" from the Facade of the Nativity of the Sagrada
Familia. Inside, the museum has a wide collection of personal objects
and works by Gaudí and some of his collaborators, spread over three
floors; on the ground floor there is furniture designed by Gaudí for the
Batlló and Calvet houses, as well as a room dedicated to the Chiappo
Arietti couple; on the first floor, Gaudí's office and bedroom are
shown, furniture and hydraulic mosaic flooring designed for Casa Milà,
as well as a room dedicated to the painter and designer Aleix Clapés; on
the second floor there is the Enric Casanelles Library, which is not
included in the visit to the museum and whose collection can only be
consulted by appointment, named in honor of Enric Casanelles i Farré
(1914-1968), secretary of the Associació Amigos de Gaudí and one of the
main promoters of the architect's work. Among the objects on display at
the museum are a bronze reproduction of Gaudí's death mask, a work by
Joan Matamala, and an altarpiece in wood and ivory from Casa Milà, a
work by Josep Llimona.
The park can be reached by exiting at Lesseps Station on Line 3 of
the Barcelona Metro and following the tourist boards, although the park
entrance is still some distance away. It is also possible to reach the
park using several urban buses (the ones that stop closest are 24, 31,
32, 74, 92 and 112) or tourist buses. The park is accessible to
wheelchairs, but due to the uneven terrain and the size of the park,
some areas are difficult to access for individuals with limited
mobility. However, key areas of the park can be easily visited.
According to data from 2008, Park Guëll is visited annually by four
million people (84% of which are tourists), twice as many as the Sagrada
Familia and the Alhambra, making it the most visited monument in
Barcelona. The progressive deterioration caused by the large influx of
visitors (four times the recommended number) led Barcelona City Council
to express at the end of 2009 its intention to limit access to the park,
triggering a strong controversy that led to the measure being frozen. At
the end of 2011, the entity responsible for the city's tourism
management (Turisme de Barcelona) once again put on the table the
possibility of charging an admission fee to tourists who want to visit
the park, a measure that the municipality neither endorsed nor ruled
out. , referring the debate on the topic to the creation of a working
group to discuss the future of Park Güell as a whole. In July 2012 it
was announced that from next autumn the park would no longer have free
entry, with visitors having to pay an admission fee that could exceed €5
to enter the historic area of the park. However, the city's inhabitants
will be able to continue accessing it free of charge. To access the
interior of the Gaudí House-Museum, you must pay a separate admission
fee.