The Port Vell and Barceloneta

Today, we took a long walk from Gracia down to the sea.  It was a gorgeous, sunny day with barely a breeze.

The Port Vell (old port) has been completely redeveloped, there is a wonderful wooden foot bridge which rotates to let the sailboats through from the marina to the open sea.  We had a pleasant walk along the sea to the beach at Barceloneta.

When the Citadel was constructed in 1718, the homes in La Ribera were demolished with no compensation given to the inhabitants.  Barceloneta was to be built to compensate the homeowners; however, as it took more than 40 years to complete the project, it was the descendants of those original La Ribera inhabitants who received the new homes.

Barceloneta was designed in 1753, at the time, it was considered very progressive as it was laid out in a grid system with a market and central Placa.  Long, narrow blocks of houses were to only have one upper floor to ensure access to sunlight and air.  Not surprisingly, the restriction was modified in 1837 and then ignored, resulting in dark little streets as building height increased.

Since we meandered along the sea, I will add a small snippet about the fishermen in medieval Barcelona.  Fishermen had no interest in politics, they were not part of the Council of One Hundred, their life was at sea.  At sea, the skipper’s word was law.  The catch was divided equally between the crew, with the captain taking two shares, one for him and one for maintenance of the boat.  Shipmates were fiercely loyal, there was also a feline member of the crew on board who tended not to be loyal.  The coveted cats were large and black, their role on board was that of the ratter.  The best cats were stolen from other boats, lured on board with a piece of fish.  Under maritime law, the owner of a cat-less ship that was infested with rats, had to compensate the crew.

Marina at the Port Vell

Ginormous yacht

Beach at Barceloneta

Peix (Fish) by Frank Gehry

 Barceloneta

On our return from the seaside we meandered through some of the old medieval area of the city then continued on up to Gracia.

Placa Reial

The Placa is graceful, it is one of Barcelona’s most elegant spaces.  Surrounded by arcades, the Placa is massive.  The fountain displays figures of the Three Graces.  The lamp posts were designed by Gaudi when he was an architecture student, they depict Hermes, the patron god of Catalan business - two serpents around a staff and a winged helmet.  The Placa went into decline after the merchants and bankers left for Eixample in the 1880s.  It became a rather vile space in the 60s and 70s with all manner of drug dealers, but has since been restored.  Today, it is very popular with visitors and was very busy, the bars and restaurants in the Placa do a brisk trade.

Placa Reial

Font de les Tres Gràcies-  Fountain of the Three Graces

Tomorrow is flight day so we have to finish our cava, pack up and get up quite early to catch our flight.  This has been another exceptional trip, Spain is marvellous and we really enjoyed Catalunya and Barcelona.  The best hiking was in els Ports, we have fond memories of the time we spent in those beautiful mountains.

Domenech Architecture

Casa Lleo Morera

Domenech was commissioned by Morera to remodel the house which was originally built in 1864.  The project was started in 1902 and completed in 1906.  Unfortunately, the lower floor of the house was mutilated in 1943 by Loewe, a leather goods retailer, and most of the interior decor and furnishing were stripped.  The second floor has been preserved, it features ceramic mosaics and wonderful stained glass.

Hospital de La Santa Creu I Sant Peu

Completed in 1910, this was Domenech’s largest project.  The site was 360 acres and Domenich wanted to design a garden city within the grid city of the Eixample.  He wanted colour, trees, fresh air and a sense of the earth underfoot for the patients.

Domenech’s design was brilliant, he excavated the site and put all of the service areas and corridors underground.  A series of pavilions rose up over the service areas with each pavilion linked to the service net.  This way, the separate pavilions could easily isolate infectious patients without exposing the entire hospital, it also made the hospital feel like a village.

He created a feeling of care which is noticeable upon entering the reception block, the facade glitters with mosaic murals depicting the history of the hospital from the middle ages.  Inside the reception area, octagonal columns with floral capitals bear shallow domes faced with dusty pink tiles.

On the left is a broad staircase that leads to the administrative offices, the space is bathed in golden light from a large stained glass skylight.  This space feels ceremonious, exciting and optimistic; whereas, among the pavilions, the feeling is one of intimacy as well as care.  Domenech believed that anything that could give a feeling of well being to the sick was a form of therapy.

The coloured pavilion domes were day rooms for mobile patients and their families.  The tiled interior vaults of the wards were serene, peaceful, cool and repetitive.  Inside is rest, outside is optimism.  Gardens also figured prominently in the design, Domenich planned two gardens per pavilion for the patients to relax in.

The facility underwent dramatic modifications to accommodate modern medical technology, unfortunately, this damaged the design to a great degree.  There has been a massive restoration of the site and many pavilions are now occupied by international organizations involved in healthcare, education and sustainability.

This is an incredible Moderniste site, we absolutely loved it.  The brickwork and ceramics are extraordinary.  For a hospital, it is in sharp contrast to the sterile, dull and hostile environments that pass for medical facilities at home.

Entrance Facade

Reception Area

Incredible Staircase

Staircase stained glass and ceramic ceiling

Staircase ceiling detail

Endless ceramics

Lovely ceramic ceiling

Patient pavilion that has not been restored

Garden and Pavilions

Pavilion detail

Domed patient day-room

Patient Pavilion

Subterranean service area

Modernisme Marathon

We went to the extreme today, mired in Modernisme all day long, our brains couldn’t really process it all, we didn’t want anymore, but couldn’t stop, but vow, no more Modernisme tomorrow.

It is a great thing that we have kept up our hiking timetable, up early and out the door.  By doing so, we manage to get to places before the mob swarms in like flying locusts, they land everywhere brandishing selfie sticks.  Humans preen and pose in the most awkward looking demonstrations of self-consciousness, why do they do it?  We don’t know, but they put the preening pigeons to shame.

We have way too much to cover in one blog post; therefore, I am splitting things up into a couple of posts for today.  Since we began and ended the day with Gaudi, we will start with him.

Park Guell

Originally, the land was two adjacent farms purchased by Guell.  He intended to build an expensive housing estate and commissioned Gaudi to design it, but the lots did not sell, so the project was halted.  The Guell family gifted the park to the city.  At the time of its design, Catalanism was at a high; therefore, the park is loaded with Catalan symbolism and patriotism.  Gaudi believed that Catalans were so different from Spaniards that there was no common ground between them, either culturally or politically.

One may interpret the ceramic reptile as a representation of the old shield of the French city of Nimes whose emblem was a crocodile.  This represents the northern limit of the Old Catalunya in the time of the Frankish kings.  Nimes was the twin city of Barcelona and was also a textile centre.

The cavern to which the stair leads is an emblem of Roman origins with the Doric columns and shallow dome vaults -  the classical temple.  Romanesque Catalonia, which I have completely ignored, is symbolized by the gloomy dry-stone porticos and arcades.

The serpentine benches of broken fragments were planned by Gaudi’s assistant, Jujol, who was a brilliant colourist in the design of mosaics and trencadis.  It is said that Jujol was so inspired by the project that he smashed his own set of dinnerware to use in the benches.

The two Hansel and Gretel looking houses at the entrance were planned as porter’s lodges, to be used to receive guests at the estate.  The roofs of the porter’s lodges are extraordinary, it looks like somebody went wild with fondant (icing) but they are made of ceramic pieces.

The Park Guell website urges visitors to purchase tickets online, but then you only have 30 minutes to gain entry from your purchased time slot.  We didn’t know how long it would take us to walk there, so we decided to just go.  We overshot (as usual) the main entry and ended up at the far entry where the tour buses park.  The walk is pretty much uphill and there is an escalator somewhere, which is crazy, we took streets and steps up.  When we walked up to get tickets, no other visitors where there so that all worked out very well.  When we got to the area where you need an entry ticket there were a few busloads of Japanese tourists but not many other people were there yet.  After a while it started to get very busy.  We walked all over the park, there is a large area that does not require an entrance ticket as it is more like a natural park with trees and paths.  When we left via the same entry, there was a huge lineup to get tickets, so it really does work well to get out there early in the morning.

Stone Portico

Serpentine Bench

Incredible trencadi design (broken tiles)

Note the white shards of dinner plates

Porter's Lodge

Porter's Lodge with delicious roof

Hypostyle Exterior

Hypostyle Room, Interior

Ceramic Salamander

Monumental Flight of Steps

This thing has eyes that shimmer in the sunlight

Portico of the Washerwoman

Casa Batllo 1904-1906

This is a conversion of an existing apartment building.  The street level facade is an undulating band of stone-framed windows, the walls are covered in mosaic and the roof is a scaly dragon’s back.  On a grey day the walls look subaqueous, on a bright day they look like a jewel box.  One interpretation of the facade is that it represents a dragon and its lair.  The curving balconies are mask-like, the skulls of the dragon’s victims.  The window frames on the first floor are carved like bones and tendons while the curved gape of the windows is the dragon’s open jaw.

We didn’t go into any of the Modernisme houses, but the interior is brilliantly done.  The stairwell is awash in light right to the bottom.  To achieve this, the windows increase in size from top to bottom and a skylight brings in light from the top.  The blue tiles get lighter in colour as they descend from floor to floor, the tiles go from cobalt blue, to sky blue to pearly grey to white at the bottom.  Therefore, there is no dark pit at the bottom of the stairwell but the effect is very discreet.

Note the femur and tibia bone details in the windows

Reptile roof and mask balconies

Casa Mila (La Pedrerea - The Stone Quarry)

The facade is like a sea cliff with caves for people, the forged iron balconies represent kelp and coral.  The whole surface of the building looks rather muscular.  Rather than an internal staircase there is a spiral pedestrian ramp.

There is a lot of imagery of a medieval castle, the chimney and stairway exits on the roof are shaped like helmets of staring sentinels and centurions.  Elegant catenary arches support the attic roof.

The construction was quite daring as the folds and trunks of stone are supported by a complex steel armature.  All of the various curvatures are due to the wavy wall, the engineer had to hang chains between the columns and trace their curve to make the steel framing.

Balcony railings depict marine plant life

Roof chimney detail

Incredibly undulating structure

No balcony railing is repeated

Sagrada Familia (Holy Family)

The Sagrada Familia was begun by the Josephines, a lay association dedicated to Saint Joseph.  They thought they needed a temple in Barcelona for people to go to pray and do penance for the sins of modernism.  They bought a piece of land in an unfavourable part of Eixample, flocks of goats continued to graze around the temple in the 1890s.

In 1882, the first stone was laid, the plan was an ugly Gothic Revival by the architect Villar, but he quit the next year and they hired Gaudi in 1884.  In the beginning, the Josephines had the money to finance the construction, so they gave Gaudi a free reign with the design.  Gaudi designed inclined columns which would transfer the load straight to the ground with no outward thrust, this eliminated the need for buttresses to support the structure.

By 1910, interest had waned and funding ran out.  Gaudi became obsessed with the temple and never stopped begging for money to support construction.  By the 1920s, Gaudi was marginalized and popular opinion was that the Sagrada Familia was an overwrought mess of a building.  Gaudi basically fell apart and became a gaunt old man, he absent mindedly wandered into the tram line and was hit by a tram on June 7, 1926, he died three days later in hospital at 74 years of age.  Gaudi only saw one of his facades go up before he died, the Nativity facade, up to its rose window and only one of the spires on the Nativity facade.

After WWI, Modernisme was out and noucentaine was in, it was a movement toward the classic imagery of the Mediterranean and a relief from the elitist, social decadence of Art Nouveau architecture and decoration.  The architecture was more classicist.

In the 1920s and 1930s most workers regarded Sagrada Familia with indifference or hostility, a symbol of the excess of their capitalist bosses and the clergy who served them.  The Catalan anarchists hated it.  In 1936, during the civil war, the anarchists attacked the crypt and the workshops of the temple, they destroyed all of the models, drawings and calculations, basically the whole archive, to ensure the temple would never be finished.

Since that time, the architects can only guess at Gaudi’s intentions for the remainder of the design.  Gaudi tended to make things up as he went along, this level of spontaneity is part of the brilliance of this building, but has been missing in the last fifty years of work on the Sagrada Familia.

They are now using reinforced concrete and resin bonded finishes rather than stone, of course this bears no relation to the organic quality of the original material of the Nativity facade.  Most of the construction in the 70s and 80s was total kitsch, the Darth Vader-like centurions which have been copied from the chimneys of Gaudi’s Casa Mila look fairly ridiculous.  The temple is highly controversial but they are forging ahead, an estimated completion date is something like 2026, the one hundred-year anniversary of Gaudi’s death.

We didn’t like the exterior of this building at all, the original facade is interesting as the spires look like drippy candles.  The old portion is organic, earthy, rough and artistic; whereas, the new construction is really ugly and the sculpture looks rudimentary with sharp lines.  We think they should have left the original portions and not bothered with trying to complete the remainder of the design.

The inside is another matter, apparently it is fantastic, but we had no interest in going inside.  The photos of the inside reveal splendid columns that look like trees and the space is awash in light from stained glass windows.

Nativity Facade

More recent construction

Barcelona - Old City and New City

We are back in Barcelona, so we need to talk more about the planning of the city after the Bourbon walls came down.  I will provide a bit of a review about conditions for the workers and how their lives should have been improved by the expansion of the city.

The old city, the medieval centre, was surrounded by the Bourbon walls.  Life for the textile workers living inside these walls in the nineteenth century was abysmal.  They were poorly paid,  crammed into basements without light or heat and living spaces averaged 90 square feet per person.  The people were ravished by epidemics, malnourishment, toxic fumes from chemicals and poisonous dyes.  There was no education and child labour was the norm.

The first modern city plan was Barceloneta, a grid system of streets near the sea.  This was also when the Ramblas was created, a wide avenue running from the sea, in a straight line to the NNE, preserving the edge of the medieval city.  Today, the Ramblas is a horrid, touristy kitsch of a street.

In the early 1820s, a paved road was constructed from the top of the Ramblas out to the village of Gracia, the Passeig de Gracia.  Today the Passeig de Gracia is an upscale street with the highest concentration of Moderniste masterpieces.

The juncture of the Ramblas and Passeig de Gracia was the first breach of the city walls.  How to develop the triangle of land that formed between the wall and the barracks was in dispute.  The issue was never resolved, the space is the Placa de Catalunya and there is an awkward change from the old city to the new city when crossing this placa.

After the Bourbon walls were finally demolished, Barcelona held a competition for the design of the new city, the Eixample, or widening.  The design was awarded to Rovira, who deferred to the old Barcelona.  His plan involved extending the axis of the Ramblas to create a new square from which several avenues would fan out, dividing the city into wedges, this emphasized the old city.  However, Madrid stepped in and chose the plan of Cerda.

Cerda was a socialist and an engineer, not an architect.  Cerda planned a grid system with each block representing a social cross section of people, he envisioned the workers and the wealthy living together with no hierarchy and no desirable or less desirable areas of the new city.  None of this came to be, of course.  A railway split the area, the property on the right side was more desirable than the property on the left side of the tracks.

Cerda’s plan ignored the long history of Barcelona and shifted focus away from the old city by designing three great avenues to cut through the new city.  The block plan was to have a set of 25 blocks with its own school, day care etc.  Only 1/3 of each block was to have buildings, the remaining space between apartments was to be patio gardens lined with trees and some blocks were to be left open for public parks.  All blocks were to have trees, some on the outside lining the sidewalks and many trees in the space inside the blocks.

Each block would have the corners chamfered at 45 degrees to allow for turning and loading space, the chamfers also opened up the Eixample to more light.

Building of the Eixample began in 1860, by 1870, there was not one building of any interest.  A building boom began in the 1870s which resulted in a slum of cell-like apartments for the working class along with the odd opulent building for the wealthy.  The public park space never materialized, clean drinking water and proper drainage were non-existent and disease swept the new city, just as it had in the old city.

Cerda’s plan of open space never came to fruition because of the greed of developers and landlords.  The internal patio spaces and the treed interiors were lost as the internal spaces were taken up with storage buildings and office space.  The ends of the blocks were closed off with multistory buildings and the height of buildings within the blocks were increased or attics were added to the tops.

The result was really a travesty, the Eixample became a monotonous series of fortress-like blocks.  The only departure from the plan that was wonderful, were the private streets which cut across some of the blocks, which are lined with charming houses with front gardens.

However, the Eixample is filled with the most amazing and creative Moderniste buildings, they are a total departure from the banal and flourished in the streets of the new city.

I also want to talk about another Moderniste architect, his work is wonderful, we absolutely love it.

Josep Puig i Cadafalch 1867-1956

Puig was very much a traditionalist and deeply Catalan, he argued that good architecture in any country rose from local culture.  He also thought that medieval art was the most adaptable to modern structural building technology.  Puig liked Gothic architecture of the fifteenth century with its play of stone lines across dramatic voids.

He was a draftsman, he translated graphic effects into the age-old Catalan crafts of iron, tile, wood and brick.  His expertise was in surfaces and materials.

Puig, very much the Catalan, did not draw inspiration from Moorish architecture, there was not much Moorish historical architecture in Catalunya, since the Moors were driven out fairly early on.  Rather, he drew inspiration from the north, admiring German culture and its industrial drive and Flemish painting, as Catalan High Gothic painting was essentially a local version of Flemish painting.

Casa de la Punxes - The House of Points 1903-1905

This is an oddity in a Mediterranean city.  There are four round towers topped with a witch’s hat spire, the main tower has an elaborate lantern.  The roof has sharp gables and finials.  Plain brick walls break out into High Gothic tribunes and miradors trimmed with ornamental stonework.   Sant Jordi and the dragon are carved into the apex of the gable. Critics thought that this house was too Catalanist and politically subversive.  

We loved this building and stood around admiring it for a long time, the tourist hoards don't come to see this stunning building as it is not part of the parade of Moderniste buildings on Passeig de Gracia.

Casa Amatller

This was a redesign of an existing house owned by the Amatller family who made their fortune in the chocolate business, the house was designed in 1898 by Puig and completed in 1900.  This is a Catalan Gothic palace with a flat wall to the street and a large central courtyard from which a staircase ascends to the main salon on the first floor, much like the fifteenth century palaces in the medieval centre.

The first 2/3 of the wall on the facade is ochre and white stucco, looking more Italian than Catalan, then a Flemish stepped pediment rises, but it is decorated with polychrome tiles in blue, green and pink and is studded with florets.  The sheen and twinkle of the wall in the morning sun is said to be astonishing.

Medieval details include the entrance portal depicting Sant Jordi and the dragon.  There is a lot going on in the facade if one looks closely.  A lot of the decoration refers to the chocolate business as well as Amatller's hobbies, those of photography and reading.

This house really stands out with its sharp angles as it sits next to Gaudi's Casa Batllo with its undulating surface and aquatic blues and greens.  We will post some photos of Casa Batllo tomorrow.

Casa Amatller with Flemish stepped gable and ceramics

Sant Jordi fighting the dragon

Window and balcony detail

Critter pouring chocolate 

A rat photographer

A donkey reading a book

Pottery pigs

Glass blowing frogs

Letter A intertwined with branches and leaves of an almond tree

The train from Valencia to Barcelona took about three hours, train travel is such a comfortable way to travel, there is plenty of leg room and space.  We took an early train, so John headed to the cafe car to get us cafe con leche, we also took snacks along as we didn't have time to eat or drink anything in the morning.

The metro station is very handy to the train station in Barcelona and everything is so well signed that there is no doubt that one is going in the correct direction.  Our metro stop is very close to our hotel in Gracia.  Gracia is north of the old Barcelona and north of Eixample.  It is a really quiet area that is pretty much devoid of tourists.

We dropped our luggage and then walked down to the medieval core to pick up the tea that we forgot when we were here about four weeks ago.  Then we checked out Placa Reial and the Boqueria Market.  The market was chock full of tourists, the market in Valencia is far better with no tourists, more reasonable prices and better products.

It is great to be back in Barcelona as we really like this city, but it is very busy compared to a month ago.  There are just tonnes of people about, lots of tour groups and school groups, it is really jammed. However, Gracia is a calm oasis, so we are glad we decided to stay up here for the last portion of our trip.

We picked up the last of the food supplies we need and are already lamenting the last of our shopping at the fantastic Spanish food stores and markets.  The hotel left us a small bottle of really good cava and we stocked up on some more for the next few days.

The rest of this trip will be all about architecture, everybody should be starved for good architecture by now, so get ready for the final onslaught.