Antoni Gaudí · 1906 · Barcelona
The house of bones and dragons
Between 1904 and 1906 Antoni Gaudí remodelled an ordinary apartment block on Passeig de Gràcia into one of the strangest and most beloved buildings in Barcelona. Casa Batlló has almost no straight lines: its façade ripples with bone-like columns and mask-shaped balconies, clad in a shimmering trencadís mosaic of broken ceramic and glass that changes colour with the light. The scaled, iridescent roof is popularly read as the back of a dragon, pierced by the cross-topped tower of Saint George.
Inside, Gaudí treated the building as a living organism — a central lightwell tiled in graded blues so daylight feels even at every floor, oak handrails moulded to the hand, and a loft of catenary arches like a ribcage. A UNESCO World Heritage Site and now one of the city's most visited houses, Casa Batlló is Catalan Modernisme at its most sculptural and dreamlike.