Tourist places | gaudi

Torre Calatrava, Barcelona

May 262008

The Montjuic Communications Tower (Torre Telefonica) is a telecommunication tower in the Montjuic neighborhood of Barcelona, Spain. Designed by Santiago Calatrava, construction on the tower began in 1989 and was completed in 1992. The white tower was built for Telefonica to transmit television coverage of the 1992 Summer Olympics Games in Barcelona. The 136 m (446 ft) tower is located in the Olympic park, and represents an athlete holding the Olympic Flame. The basement is covered with ‘trencadis’, Gaudi’s mosaic technique created from broken tile shards. Because of the tower’s orientation, it works also as a giant sundial, which uses the Europa square to indicate the hour. Barcelona is great for vacations with memorable sightseeing tours.

GPS travel destinations: 41° 21′ 51″ N, 2° 9′ 2″ E

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Casa Batllo, Barcelona

Barcelona No Responses »

May 072008

Casa Batllo is a building restored by Antoni Gaudí and Josep Maria Jujol, built in the year 1877 and remodelled in the years 1905–1907; located at 43, Passeig de Gràcia (passeig is Catalan for promenade or avenue), part of the Illa de la Discòrdia in the Eixample district of Barcelona, Catalonia.

Casa Batllo, Barcelona

The local name for the building is Casa dels ossos (House of Bones), and indeed it does have a visceral, skeletal organic quality. It was originally designed for a middle-class family and situated in a prosperous district of Barcelona. The building looks very remarkable — like everything Gaudí designed, only identifiable as Modernisme or Art Nouveau in the broadest sense. The ground floor, in particular, is rather astonishing with tracery, irregular oval windows and flowing sculpted stone work. It seems that the goal of the designer was to avoid straight lines completely. Much of the façade is decorated with a mosaic made of broken ceramic tiles (trencadís) that starts in shades of golden orange moving into greenish blues. The roof is arched and was likened to the back of a dragon or dinosaur. A common theory about the building is that the rounded feature to the left of centre, terminating at the top in a turret and cross, represents the sword of Saint George (patron saint of Catalonia), which has been plunged into the back of the dragon. Must tourist spot for any Barcelona sightseeing tours.
GPS travel coordinates: 41° 23′ 30″ N, 2° 9′ 54″ E

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