Park Guell

One of the masterpieces of Antonio Gaudi is in the outskirts of Valkarka in the Gracia area. The construction of the park continued from 1900 to 1914. In those days, Gracia was quite far from the city center. The idea of creating the park belonged to one large Catalan industrialist, patron and industrialist Eusebio Güell, who patronized Gaudi. Guel inspired the city-gardens of England. He wanted to build something like that next to Barcelona. To realize his idea, Guell bought 15 hectares of land on a hill. In Park Guell, it was planned to build 40 villas and mansions for wealthy citizens, but the project turned out to be financially flawed, and of the 40 planned buildings only two were built, and both with the money of Güell himself. In one of these houses, since 1906, Antonio Gaudi himself lived almost until his death. After the death of the architect, a museum was opened in his house. The reason for the failure of Park Guell was an uncomfortable location, too close for lovers of the suburban quiet and too far for fans of city life. In the end, the heirs of Eusebio Güell sold his park to the city, and the city authorities opened it for everyone to visit.

In Park Guell reflects Gaudí's strong love for natural forms, wavy and sinuous lines. Here they are with an unprecedented naturalness in the natural ensemble, something that will be thought about for many more years.

At the entrance to Park Güell from Olot Street, visitors see two "gingerbread" cottages. Crowned these houses mushroom and cross. Today they have a café and a souvenir shop. Then begins a curved staircase with small fountains. On it are also the coat of arms of Catalonia and small figures of animals. The most famous is the large lizard covered with mosaic. This lizard has become one of the symbols of Barcelona. Climbing the stairs, visitors go to the Hall of the Columns. In fact, the columns are only 86. These Doric columns support a sinuous vault, which is also decorated with mosaic of colored glass, medallions, etc. It turned out that the hall has good acoustics and now concerts are held here.

When Gaudi was working on the construction of Park Guell, he asked the workers to bring all the bottles, shards and dishes found by them along the way, from which later amazingly bright and beautiful collages turned out. Such a collage adorns the work of Zhuzep-Maria Zhozhole, the bench parade of Park Guell. The bench is located outside the Hall of the St Colonna, on a large terrace terrace. The profile of the bench accurately repeats the shape of the human body. This Gaudí achieved extremely easily, he planted one of the workers in raw clay and made a bench on the resulting print. The mosaic of this bench inspired the famous artist of the surrealist Joan Miró. He often watched for hours with many fragments of inscriptions and drawings appearing on the whole bench. In Park Güell, a very thoughtful system of roads and walkways for walks that pass through galleries with columns that strongly resemble huge bird nests and bear this name.

Park Guell and Mila's house were listed in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1984.