The best of Gaudí walking tour in the heart of Barcelona
During this three hour tour through the heart of Barcelona, we’ll introduce you to the fantastic architecture of Antoni Gaudí, Barcelona’s most important architect, and put his work within the context of Catalan society at the time. Besides visiting some of Gaudí’s most important works, our walking tours of Barcelona will look broadly at how the city expanded in the late 19th and early 20th century and became a breeding ground for the modernist movement and, eventually, such luminaries as Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso.
We’ll begin by looking at the history of Barcelona and the growth of the city, introducing the urban planner Ildefonso Cerdá whose "enlargement" (example in Catalan) in 1859 laid out the modern city, as much as Baron von Haussman did for Paris some years later. With this architectural context as a backdrop, we’ll make our way through the heart of the city to see two of Gaudi's masterpieces: the Casa Batlló on the Manzana de la Discordia and Casa Milá (popularly known as La Pedrera).
During the course of this walk we’ll also look at the works of some of Gaudí’s followers and rivals, including buildings by Josep Puig i Cadafalch. Although few of these artists are known outside of Barcelona, their work had a significant influence on Gaudí and represent the artistic context he was working within.
To get to our final destination, we'll ride the metro together – you get to try out our dependable, comfortable underground transportation system.
Our final stop is Gaudí’s unfinished masterpiece and Barcelona’s main landmark: the Sagrada Famila .
As we move through the city, through history and through the aesthetic evolution of Barcelona we’ll look at how Gaudí's buildings fight against the modern grid and try to neutralize it in a fantastical way that borders on the absurd. We’ll learn to see his work in a new light and contextualize it within the history of the city.