on the house of bones

A "house of discord". Casa Lleo Morera by Domenech i Montaner

As impressed as we were with the Sagrada de Familia and as impressed as we were with Parc Guell, we decided that it would be best to visit the Casa Batllo. The last we were in Barcelona, before our trip onward to Morocco, we were standing outside the house with our friend, having seen the outsides of all the Art Nouveau houses on the Block of Discord. We had wanted to go inside one of them, but most of them you're only allowed in one or two rooms and it seemed somewhat of a waste. The only one with a full tour of the original construction - I say original, even though Batllo was a renovation by Gaudi and not his construction - was Casa Batllo and that cost an absurd 15 euro just for a walkaround. Since we had seen Sagrada, all of us were content with our Gaudi gambit and decided to move on to the next touristic site. Barcelona has no shortage of overpriced touristic sites, after all, and the outside is an impressive enough view. Many compare the building to a dragon, with the colorful scales of his spine forming the roof and large shaft chimney coming out with a cross at the top, said to resemble St. George's spear, thrust downward into the dragon's back. 

Outside the Casa Batllo and Casa Amatller

As it was now just the wife and I, we decided to throw in the money that it cost. Why not? We're only in Barcelona once. And of course, all the touristic activities are expensive because the operators know that same logic. Why tame your price when there's an endless demand for your historical place and you are the one supply? Simple economics there. And anyways, Gaudi was building his places for the rich, not for poor, backpacker travelers who would end up stinking up the corridors under his rib bone arches and playing pan flute inside his water chamber, in-between moments of talking about the latest Paolo Coehllo book about taming your animal spirit so that you can achieve all your dreams that you were meant to be through the realization of yourself as you are not as you are expected to be by those who don't really know you Iamalion roar. Though to be fair, all the rich Americans and Brits that were populating the halls of Casa Batllo are probably reading Coehllo, though at least they're not piping in the pan flute anywhere around. But this was not meant to be a discourse on bad self-help literature. 

The ceiling in the great hall

Casa Batllo, also known as the House of Bones, is a house that was redesigned by Antoni Gaudi in 1904. It's been refurbished several times since, and now it has been emptied out and serves as a kind of Museum of Gaudi architecture. Josep Batllo had bought the plain and uninteresting house on the Passeig de Gracia, thinking that he would tear it down and have the architect of the Parc Guell make him a new house. But Gaudi insisted that he could save the house in a renovation and quickly submitted his plans to Batllo. Gaudi won the debate and built his beautiful monument of modernisme.

The Batllo family owned it and lived there until the 30s, when they died and an insurance company took over and moved their offices in. In the 70s, it went under a further renovation and was rented out as a conference and meeting center, until recently when they decided they could make even more crazy, gaudi amounts of money as a museum, which is what brings us to the house today.

Audio guides in the Casa Batllo

For 15 euros, you get an audio guide that you can hold to your ear and listen to an alternating man or woman speaking in some exasperated voice about the different details of each room. From the entryway to the first floor they explain the features: the hand rails and handles are shaped to fit a person’s hand perfectly; the curved halls model the structure of natural places like caves and forests; the scaly paint is like that of a snake or dragon; the glass work, that is, the windows, are meant to resemble water or fire. In the construction, Gaudi avoided straight lines as much as possible, so everything seems fluid and changeable. All the materials possible, especially the tiles used in the mosaics, are made from recycled materials that Gaudi found in dumps or abandoned structures, and he tried to garner the laws of physics to make for the best flow of light and air possible, making this 1904 house superbly energy efficient, putting most architects of our day to shame when it comes green construction.

Looking down the light well

After Gaudi's redesign, the family primarily occupied the Noble Floor, which is among the most visually stunning floors of the house, with it's indescribable gallery of windows looking down to one of Barcelona's main boulevards, and with a ceiling that looks like you’re gazing into a whirling vortex. The top of the building though is the most interesting, both in the weird, alien, almost Geiger-esque way the Catenary arches that Gaudi is famous for hold up the corridors and the great halls. Here the different ways of light, energy and drainage are explained, with those explanations continued on the rooftop, along with a near twenty minute discussion on if Gaudi intended for the roof to have something to do with St. George and the Dragon - spoiler alert, the verdict is still out.

The rooftop patio

All in all, the 15 euro is worth it. Especially if you want to see a completed work by Gaudi, one where he was given full reins of the creative and architectural process. The Sagrada fails here, in that he died before he could finish it and was hijacked by less visionary architects in the process and Parc Guell - though with parts that are interesting and stunning - still had some limitations on what he was allowed. And hey, you're only in Barcelona once anyway.