Second in a three-part series

Barcelona is a city full of amazing sculptures, architecture, art galleries and graffiti.

You can spend a week there and only begin to uncover the dozens of statues and art galleries, the gothic cathedral of Santa Maria del Mar, sculptures by Roy Lichtenstein and Joan Miro, a museum devoted to the early works of Pablo Picasso, and dozens of art treasures throughout the city.

My wife Nicole and I had come to this city to see the works of Barcelona’s most admired — and most controversial — artist: Antonio Gaudí. This Catalan architect, who lived and worked in and around Barcelona for much of his life, poured forth his greatest masterpieces here.

Gaudí: A style all his own

Born in 1852 to the son of a coppersmith, Antonio Gaudí i Cornet trained at Barcelona’s School of Architecture and set to work on his first few municipal projects, which may have gone unnoticed had it not been for some of Barcelona’s wealthiest patrons taking a curious eye to Gaudí’s work.

By the late 19th century, Barcelona’s economy was thriving. The city expanded, and a new class of wealthy industrialists wanted to flaunt their fortunes and set a new standard of style among Europe’s elite cities. As host of the 1888 World Exhibition, the city enjoyed a flowering of the arts known as the Renaixença (Renaissance).

One prominent industrialist, Count Eusebi Güell, commissioned Gaudí to design a new addition to his farm estate and another residence in the old town. Gaudí’s relationship with the Güell family proved to be a match made in heaven. The Güells had the capital, and Gaudí let his imagination run wild.

Gaudí’s early works gave hints of the neo-Gothic, Art Nouveau, fantastical style he would become famous for in later works. Balcony floors seemed to undulate. Colorful, tile-glazed spires looked like fairy tale castles. Stone columns rose and spread branches like trees. Many of his works duplicate the art of nature — shell spirals, ocean waves, fish scales, and spiky palm tree trunks.

While Gaudí has his share of fans, he also garnered a wide array of critics who were shocked by his disregard for modern conventions, his wild use of color and form, and often outlandish designs, some of which took several years — even decades — to finish. Take Casa Mila, for example, located along the upscale Passeig de Gracia and one of Gaudí’s most famous apartment buildings commissioned by another wealthy industrialist. The building, with its wavy balconies and decorative chimneys (some resembling centurion helmets), received the snub nickname, “La Pedrera” (the quarry), because of all the rock that was used there.

Casa Batillo, another Gaudí creation further down Passeig de Gracia, has a roof that was supposed to represent the scaly back of a dragon (a homage to the Christian legend of St. George who slayed the pagan dragon). The balconies were made to look like skulls. Some were shocked by the design.

After visiting Barcelona in the 1920s, the French Prime Minister once reportedly joked that Catalans were so enthralled with the legend of St. George they built homes for dragons.

Parc Güell

Our first visit to a Gaudí landmark in Barcelona was Parc Güell, situated in the west of the city just below Mount Pelat. After a steep walk up from the metro station in the late afternoon, we found the entrance crowded with visitors. There are some two dozen parks in Barcelona, but this is the one most tourists have at the top of their list.

The two gatehouses at the entrance resemble gingerbread houses (inspired by the story, Hansel and Gretel) and are adorned with brightly colored tile and glass. This technique of piecing broken tiles and colored glass in a mosaic is known as trencadís. No one knows if Gaudí found this technique accidentally or if it was purposely planned out, but all throughout the park, you’ll find benches, frescos, and buildings decorated with shards of broken bottles, plates and tiles. Tourist shops capitalize on Gaudi’s trencadís designs, which are on everything from T-shirts and key chains to stained-glass ornaments and postcards.

At the park, there’s a trencadís lizard and fountain that greets you on the stairs at the entrance (popular among the tourists) and the serpentine trencadís ceramic bench (supposedly a watchful dragon) that borders an open square looking out over the city’s skyline. There’s also a hall of 100 columns (actually only 86) and arched columns (made from rocks found at the site) that lean into hillsides like some ancient stone temple.

Although Gaudí began Parc Güell in 1900 with the idea of building 60 apartments in a picturesque setting, only three buildings had been built by the outbreak of World War I. One of them was Gaudí’s house (now a museum). The city took over Parc Güell in 1922 and converted it into a public park. Filled with an assortment of palm trees and well-groomed gardens, it is a welcome respite for walkers, runners and families who come to explore the sinuous two miles of trails around 37 acres. It’s a nice place to end the day among the tweeps and warbles of birds, and the airy calm of trees is a comfort from the congestion of city traffic.

We found ourselves taking photographs and wandering along paths silently as if tuning our senses to wait for some magical animal that might pop out of the flowerbeds. Occasionally couples would approach us asking us to take their picture with a scenic backdrop. We gladly accepted. Strangely enough, Nicole and I were so interested in taking photos of the artwork and natural beauty of Barcelona, we never had someone else take a picture of us the whole time we were there.

La Sagrada Família

The next day, we left our apartment in Barceloneta and headed to Gaudí’s greatest masterpiece: La Sagrada Família. Massive, marvelous and still waiting to be completed after more than 100 years, The Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família (the Atonement Temple of the Sacred Family) is the most unusual cathedral you’ll ever enter.

With its towering spires, elaborately decorated facades and tree-like stone columns, it has been compared to the Taj Mahal as an architectural wonder of the world. Others have criticized it as a gaudy, overpriced waste of space with no completion date in sight. English author George Orwell once wrote, “I think the anarchists showed bad taste in not blowing it up when they had the chance.”

Though Gaudí was involved with the project for 40 years, he neither began nor finished it. He got involved with the cathedral’s design at the age of 32 when another architect, who wanted a purely Gothic design, resigned. Gaudí took on the project while working on several others, but he devoted the last decade or so of his life to La Sagrada Família with all of his passion and talent. It consumed him.

Construction began in 1882, the foundations were laid in 1893, and by 1904, the Nativity facade was completed. This facade defies description. It’s a dizzying, ornate set of sculptured animals, plants and scenes depicting the birth of Christ. The Passion facade, completed in 1990, is in stark contrast with angular figures, sparse scenery and stoic faces depicting the death of Christ.

Gaudí intended to have 18 towers at La Sagrada Família — 12 for the Apostles, four for the Gospel writers and two more for Christ and Mary. Only one of the towers was finished before Gaudí’s death — he was hit by a tram car while crossing the street in front of La Sagrada Família and died three days later. Plans for the church were nearly lost after a Civil War mob ransacked Gaudí’s office in 1936, but construction began again in 1952 and a small army of engineers, architects and designers have tried to carry out Gaudí’s vision. Stone was imported from all over the world. Models were built.

Today, four of the main towers have been completed and, on the day we toured, huge cranes angled over the towers as a spray of welding sparks showered down into what one day might be the altar. Rather than the traditional, dome-like Gothic arches inside, Gaudí made the pillars look like smooth, gray sycamore trees rising and then branching to hold up the ceiling. Nature was his greatest master, Gaudí would say.

Climbing up the 100-plus stairs in one of the towers and getting a view of the city, we could look out on the whole of Barcelona like angels perched in the clouds. While the facades down below convey a reverence and spiritual sanctity, the towers give way to Gaudí’s playful side. They are topped with colorful trencadís, some to look like bunches of grapes or gumdrops and others elaborately decorated crosses that seem to radiate.

The sheer height of these stone towers — rising 300 feet into the air — is breathtaking when you consider the main tower under construction will go another 250 higher!

In the museum crypt underneath the church, we read about La Sagrada Família’s history and Gaudí’s intricate plans which were used for each new section before it was erected. Gaudí preferred models to sketches because he could see the architecture more clearly. Though most of his career he made a living from the patronage of wealthy businessmen, Gaudí ended his life a devout Catholic in poverty while he spent much of his time on the construction site at La Sagrada Família. He welcomed visits from high-ranking church officials and politicians, but chose to live like a pauper.

From our visits to these Gaudí monuments in Barcelona, we came to appreciate that Gaudí was one of those rare geniuses who was able to pursue his wildest dreams in architecture while also enjoying a popularity and even saint-like status well beyond his lifetime.

Michael Beadle can be reached at mbeadle@haywood.k12.nc.us.