Spain Day 4 - Modernisme in Barcelona

Besides the soccer match, the only thing we bought tickets for before actually going to Spain was a tour of the Sagrada Familia church and Gaudi's house museum. So, of course, the day of those tickets the region of Catalan decided to go on strike as a demonstration against the police violence during the referendum. However, we had a great guide book with a walking tour of modernisme (Catalan modernism) architecture outlined, so we got our fill despite the strike.



There are so many modernist buildings in Barcelona, each unique and interesting. The most famous architect of course is Anton Gaudi, who designed many buildings as well as the Sagrada Familia church. He lived at the Sagrada Familia building site for 14 years, but never saw his work finished. In fact, they are still finishing the church according to his original designs.



Along the route the Sagrada Familia were a bunch of neat houses, designed by a variety of architects, some of which are pictured below.

The Sagrada familia itself was an impressive site. Currently there are two main facades, which look hardly anything alike except in shape. One side has very angular sculptures depicting scenes from the Passion of the Christ, and the other has very detailed scenes from the Nativity and the life of Christ adorned with leaves and other natural motifs. The third facade, named the Glory facade, is still under construction. According to Wikipedia, it is estimated construction could finish by 2026, on the centenary of Gaudi's death.



From the Sagrada Familia, we took a long walk up the hill to Park Guell, which is another of the famous Gaudi landmarks in the city. Here the strike worked to our advantage though, since normally you have to buy tickets to get into the "monuments" section of the park where most of the Gaudi work is, but when we got there they had just opened the gates to whoever wanted to see the sights that day. In this section were really neat mosaic sculptures and the famous mosaic snaking bench that overlooks the city. There are also some really neat viaduct-like structures, and it's generally a really nice park to walk around in, an oasis in the city like so many parks are.








Our feet were terribly tired by the time we made it back to our hotel, and though we went to see if we could get some groceries, there were a lot of marchers and basically all the restaurants and grocery stores were closed, so we were glad we had gotten some food earlier in the week and had another picnic dinner of bread, peanut butter, olives and fruit. Luckily, our hotel room had a nice little patio to sit on and enjoy the evening, and we turned in early anyway since we had an early train the next morning to Madrid.

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