When walking down the central Passeig de Gracia, you might suddenly see a crowd of tourists standing by bus stops taking pictures at a particular building slightly hidden amongst the tall trees. Some tourists might even be standing on the road blocking rapidly on-coming traffic. But when you reach this point you will understand why there is such a crowd.
A modernist construction of tall windows, wacky balconies (one of Gaudi's trademarks) and infinite numbers of colours suddenly spring out to you from amongst the trees. The building structure is the same as any other: ground floor, a few upper floors and a roof. However, the most remarkable sight is right at the top: the roof itself.
The roof of Casa Batllo evokes images of waves, of sea shells, of scale-clad animals, of lizards (remember Gaudi created the world renowned statue of a lizard or dragon for the Parc Guell)... the list could go on depending on each individual's imagination! Like the inside "patio" (central open skylight), whose wave-like wall colour gradually evolves from a very light blue to a darker hue, so does this roof change colour from a dark blue with a greenish tinge to a dark rusty red or copper colour. These two colours seem like they were two of Gaudi's favourites, as they are two predominant colours amongst his art. As the day moves on, the intensity of these colours varies, creating an effect which is very striking (although you would have to stand in front of the building all day and film it and then press fast forwards x3 to see this change)
As you move further down the building from the roof, you start to see that even what looked like a normal facade is indeed packed with new and evolved shapes and colours. One of Gaudi's main influences came from skeletons and bones, and this particular building showcases this in a much more obvious way than many of his other buildings:
As you can very clearly see in these two pictures, both balconies look as if they are actually being supported by mammoth-sized bones. Gaudi must have obviously compared the building to an actual living body, because for a body to stand tall it needs bones, otherwise it would be a rather large lump of meat on the floor. So what way to give this body an even bigger sense of life inside it that by placing a few bones here and there?
If you look at the picture of the balconies, you will probably not associate them with bones so much. But in reality these balconies almost look like vertebrae plate or pelvis bones! So, to the allusion of life which we see when we see the slanted and "scaled" roof, we can now add long leg bones and pelvis and vertebrae bones. This almost makes it feel like a real body: the long bones stand at the bottom for the legs, the pelvis supports the middle, and the scales cover the head.
Above these lines you can see a picture of the main "body" of the building, which, like Gaudi's famous "lizard" and bench at the Parc Guell, seems to be entirely covered by extremely colourful and varied tiles all the way up. Again looking at the image we see images of birds and trees on the wall, another clear hint as to what this particular building seems to be all about.
Unfortunately the inside was actually close at the time of day I arrived, so I was unable to see the inside, which is very impressive apparently. But I leave you with this, which I hope should be enough to persuade anyone to visit this when next in Barcelona, and also to have a possible interpretation of what the building is all about.
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