The Casa Batllo - Possibly Gaudi's finest work

My husband has a job, which more often than not requires him to work on Christmas day and through most of the Christmas period. Whilst this is the perfect reason to turn down all invitations to spend Christmas with family, it's not the greatest way to celebrate the big day with a 14 hour shift. So last Christmas I decided that we'd have our very own Christmas but just a few days before the rest of the world. And so I booked a long weekend in Barcelona.

As I mentioned, the Casa Batllo is on Passeig de Gracia - just a few blocks down the road and on the other side from La Pedrera, the Gaudi building with what looks like Star Wars Storm-troopers on the roof. This is a key street for lovers of Catalan Modernism. I have visited both buildings and the greater degree of accessibility in the Casa Batllo makes it my favourite of the two.

Gaudi didn't build 43 Passeig de Gracia - in fact there had already been a building there for nearly 30 years before he got his hands on it. The owner in 1900 was a local businessman called Josep Batllo Casanovas (great name, means new house - how appropriate). Originally he wanted the whole building knocked down and rebuilt from scratch but changed his mind and commissioned a refurbishment and new façade instead. Like most of us who buy a house with big plans, sometimes it's wise to scale them down once the builder's estimates come in.

The Entrance fee includes a very good and comprehensive audio tour. At some times in the year I think it's possible to buy a cut-down ticket that only includes the main floor of the building and excludes the attic and the chimney. However we weren't asked what we wanted to see - just asked for €16 which, in retrospect, it was probably worth.

~Taking the Tour~

As you enter, you get the first hint that there won't be many straight lines in the building. The downstairs lobby has curved walls that are a bit like a cave. In front of you is a magnificent curved wooden staircase rising up to the first floor. The staircase has a frilled edge that makes it look a bit like the backbone of a dinosaur or other giant creature. There are some spectacular 'knobs' - are they called newel posts or something like that? - at the top and bottom of the stairs - giant beads of amber glass wrapped inside curved metal swirly cages. Fantastic.

The next room is the main living room and this is the room behind the balcony façade. It has movable wooden dividers that can be left in place to make three smaller rooms or they can be folded back to make one giant room. The windows can also be folded back to leave the room with a giant balcony effect. The ceiling in this room has some amazing swirled textures around the light - they look like water flowing down a plug hole but upside down. From the windows you can look out over the Passeig de Gracia, wave at the tourists and pull faces to spoil their photographs - after all, you've paid €16 to get in, they're just standing on the street.

The main room at the back of the building on this floor is the dining room. Again, Gaudi worked hard to achieve a sense of 'bringing the outside in' as the design folks like to say on the TV - usually when building some odd monstrosity of a conservatory. In the case of the dining room, the doors open out onto a large terrace, which completely fills the space behind the building. Go out and turn back to look at the building - there are some more relaxed and 'fun' touches on the back rather than the grand and slightly more formal façade at the front. Big flowers made out of broken plates and other pottery adorn the back of the building. There are little balconies on the higher floors with flowers growing in pots. At the far end of the terrace is a water feature again made from broken pots.

Back into the building and you can pop into the shop at the side of the dining room or continue on to get the lift or start the climb up to the attic. We took the stairs - I'm not a fan of creaky old lifts and there were more things to see on the way up. The staircase winds around the 'Lightwell' - the space inside the building through which light tunnels in from above and illuminates the inner rooms. I'm not explaining that well but anyone who has been in a big apartment block should know what I mean. The tiling on the light-well is in shades of blue that vary from dark blue at the top down to much paler white and blues at the bottom. Gaudi was playing games with the light and the tiles to try to give the effect that the tiles were the same colour all the way down the well.