Barcelona Part 1 - Gaudi

After three quite cold weeks in the UK both Andy and I were looking forward to some warmer weather in Spain and we have definitely had that! Barcelona is a fantastic city - there is so much to do, everyone seems really friendly and the weather has been a sunny 25-30 degrees every day. It feels warmer than 30 degrees in Melbourne because it is much more humid, so I am glad we are here now and not in the hottest part of Summer.  

We have done heaps and I have too many photos for one blog post so this post will be about the Gaudi-related things we did and the next one will be on everything else.

We went on an excellent free walking tour that covered Gaudi's life and took us to see some of the houses he designed. For anyone who doesn't know, Gaudi was an architect who lived and worked in Barcelona in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was quite eccentric and has a very original style as well as being lucky enough to have a financial backer who gave him full artistic freedom and paid for anything he wanted.

Front view of one of Gaudi's houses.

Entrance to Park Guell. This park was designed to be a housing estate for rich people. Gaudi designed all the communal areas and then people were supposed to buy land and build their own hoses but no one wanted to because it was so far our of the town so now it is a public park.

Park Guell

Park Guell

View of Barcelona from the hill at the top of Park Guell

To get to the park you had to walk up a really big hill (and it was really hot). Fortunately some really lazy but smart person decided that it would be a good idea to put escalators all the way up :)

The current entrance to Sagrada Familia - Gaudi's cathedral and his only project for the last 40 years of his life. It is still being built - they have been building for the last 100 years with a few breaks when they needed money and for the Civil War.

Close up of the stonework on the outside.

Another close up. There were carvings like this all over the church telling biblical stories. When Gaudi realised the church wouldn't be finished in his lifetime he made detailed plans for the entire building.

This carving was made to commemorate Gaudi. It is part of one of the carvings, but the old man on the left is modelled on Gaudi and the two soldiers on the right are based on chimneys from one of his houses. Apparently George Lucas visited Barcelona and those chimneys inspired the creation of the storm troopers in star wars.

Inside the cathedral. I don't think the photos do it justice.

windows inside the cathedral

A model maker at work. They make the plaster models to help with the construction of the rest of the cathedral because it is so detailed.

I thought this was really cool - This is a model that Gaudi made to help him work out what shape all the beams and columns should be. He tied sand bags to bits of string, so all of the strings would be in tension. Then in you look in a mirror or stand on your head or something it looks like the cathedral!
http://memetician.livejournal.com/201202.html this site explains it and has much better pictures.

Andy and I outside the cathedral.