About Casa Batlló
The façade
The entrance door to a symbolic universe inspired by the sea, nature, and fantasy. Its spectacular nature causes passersby to stop and admire it at any time.
Light, color, and exuberance
Antoni Gaudí endowed Casa Batlló with an original and imaginative façade, acting as a free and happy painter. In this way, he created an exuberant, marine-inspired façade, adding involuntary sculptures, recycled materials, and decontextualized objects that he turned into art.
The effect of a wavy surface stands out, where stone, glass, and ceramics take center stage. When the façade receives the first light of the morning, the shine and glimmers bring it to life, giving it harmonious and balanced movement, as if it were a living element of the urban landscape.
Light and color come together to invite you on a journey through the sea, beauty, and joy.
Columns, balconies, and gallery
On the ground, main, and first floors, the façade incorporates slender stone columns with bone-like shapes, decorated with typically modernist floral elements.
On the other hand, the balcony railings are shaped like masks. They are made of cast iron in a single piece and fixed with two anchor points, so that part of them protrudes.
At the main floor level, Gaudí incorporated a large gallery (for seeing and being seen) that extends several meters over Passeig de Gràcia. He also added a large oval-shaped window.
Crowning of the façade
The building is crowned by a spectacular roof made up of large scales that simulate the back of an animal. Its top is made of large spherical pieces with changing colors from one end to the other. The other main element is a tower with a four-armed cross pointing to the cardinal points.
The crowning of the façade, similar to the back of a dragon, combined with the four-armed cross (which would represent the hilt of a sword), has led to popular interpretations surrounding the legend of Saint George, the patron saint of Catalonia. According to the legend, Saint George killed the dragon with his sword to save the princess and the people from the fury of the beast. In this interpretation, the roof design symbolizes the sword piercing the dragon, and the bone-shaped columns represent its victims. In fact, throughout history, Casa Batlló has been known as the House of Bones or the House of the Dragon.
Multiple interpretations
Others have seen it as an aquatic landscape that recalls Monet’s series of paintings “Water Lilies”, due to the colorful glazed ceramic cladding and broken glass fragments. Another genius, Salvador Dalí, emphasizes this marine interpretation: “Gaudí has built a house according to the shapes of the sea, representing the waves on a calm day. A true sculpture of the reflections of the twilight clouds on the water, from which emerge the shapes of extended water, water shapes that spread, stagnant water shapes, reflective water shapes, and water shapes ruffled by the wind.”
For his part, Gaudí never explained his work and directed the façade work from the outside, without precise plans, as was customary for him. Thus, he left us a House full of symbols, a fantastic imaginary, a canvas that tells a story almost indecipherable so that each person completes it with their own imagination.