Casa Batlló is Gaudí's most viscerally successful building — a 1877 structure on the Passeig de Gràcia that he rebuilt between 1904 and 1906 for the textile magnate Josep Batlló in a manner that removes every right angle and most conventional structural logic. The facade is the argument: ceramic tiles in blues, greens, and golds that shift colour with the light; balconies shaped like masks or skulls depending on interpretation; a roof of iridescent ceramic scales rising in a ridge associated with the dragon of Sant Jordi. The building is one of three major Modernista houses on the block known as the Manzana de la Discordia — Puig i Cadafalch's Casa Amatller immediately adjacent, Domènech i Montaner's Casa Lleó Morera around the corner. The interior is equally resolved: columns shaped like bones, ceilings spiralling in blue ceramic, a light shaft designed to change colour from floor to floor. The best version of Casa Batlló is not the ticketed interior tour but a sustained look at the facade from across the street in the golden afternoon light, when the tiles fire at the same temperature as the evening sky behind them.
Passeig de Gràcia, Barcelona, Spain