Barcelona Guide
The northern suburbs
Parc Güell
Address: On the outskirts of Gràcia
Opening time: Daily: May– Aug 10am–9pm; April & Sept 10am–8pm; March & Oct 10am–7pm; Nov– Feb 10am–6pm
Price: Free
From 1900 to 1914 Antoni Gaudí worked for Eusebi Güell (patron of Gaudí's Palau Güell, off the Ramblas) on the Parc Güell. This was Gaudí's most ambitious project after the Sagrada Família – on which he was engaged at the same time, commissioned as a private housing estate of sixty dwellings and furnished with paths, recreational areas and decorative monuments. It was conceived as a "Garden City" of the type popular at the time in England – indeed, Gaudí's original plans used the English spelling "Park Güell". In the end, only two houses were actually built, and the park was officially opened to the public instead in 1922.
Laid out on a hill, which provides fabulous views back across the city, the park is an almost hallucinatory expression of the imagination. Pavilions of contorted stone, giant decorative lizards, meandering rustic viaducts, a vast Hall of Columns (intended to be the estate's market), carved stone trees – all combine in one manic swirl of ideas and excesses, reminiscent of an amusement park. Perhaps the most famous element – certainly the most widely photographed – is the long, meandering ceramic bench that snakes along the edge of the terrace above the columned hall. It's entirely decorated with a brightly coloured broken tile-and-glass mosaic (a method known as trencadís) that forms a dizzying sequence of abstract motifs, symbols, words and pictures.
There are terrific views from the self-service café, which operates from one of the caverns adjoining the main terrace, but to escape the milling crowds you'll need to climb away from here, up into the wooded, landscaped gardens. At the very highest point – follow signs for "Turó de les Tres Creus" – on the spot where Gaudí had planned to place a chapel, three stone crosses top a stepped tumulus. It's from here that a 360-degree city panorama unfolds in all its glory.