Interior of Gaudi's Casa Batllo, Barcelona

Gaudi didn't like straight lines. At all. The interior of his showplace, Casa Batllo, features walls, stairwells, ceilings, and doorways that twist and undulate.  With all the wood and stone, together with the attention to natural light and the lines evoking waves, the building celebrates nature.  It's wonderfully original, but I actually liked La Pedrera even better (pictures to come!).

Block of Discord, Barcelona

One of the best parts about visiting Barcelona was the opportunity to admire all the flamboyant Modernisma architecture. In the early 1900s, four of the movement's leading architects designed family houses on a single block, where they look like they're struggling to outdo one another (hence the nickname "Block of Discord").  The architects involved are Lluis Domenechi Montaner, Antoni Gaudi, Josep Puig i Cadafalch, and Enric Sagnier, and here are their crazy funhouses:

From the top:
1. Facade of Gaudi's Casa Batllo
2. Facade of Cadafalch's Casa Amatller
3. Gaudi's Casa Batllo
4. Gaudi's Casa Batllo
5. Cadafalch's Casa Amatller
6. Gaudi
7. Gaudi
8. Montaner's Casa Lleo-Morera.  And yes, you're reading that correctly in the picture: Casa Lleo-Morera is indeed now a Guess retail store. Yikes.


Note: Enric Sagnier's Casa Mulleras was under construction and behind scaffolding when I visited Barcelona, so no pics.  Sorry.  :(

A few parting shots of Madrid . . .

. . . before I begin to post the Barcelona pics, then the Morocco pics, the Italy pics, etc etc etc.  :)

More great buildings in Madrid

Here are a few more buildings that caught my eye in Madrid.  From the top, they're the Cervantes Institute, the Agriculture Ministry building, Madrid's city hall, the Bank of Spain, and two buildings that I can't identify (can anybody help with that?).

Reina Sofia Nouvel Building, Madrid

One of the most interesting architectural spaces I saw in all of Europe was the Nouvel building at the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid.  When you're ready to take a break from staring at Picasso's Guernica, you can step out onto the terrace to look five stories down into the courtyard or out to the city beyond.  Here are some of the views:

Courtyard of the Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid

I love art museums, so you can imagine that over almost five months in Europe and the Middle East, I visited more than my fair share of good ones.  My favorite museum of the entire trip--my favorite museum anywhere, actually--is the Reina Sofia in Madrid, which showcases primarily Spanish visual arts of all kinds from 1900 to the present.  The museum functions almost like a documentary about the last 100 years of Spanish history through the lens of painting, sculpture, film, and other media.  

The museum consists of two buildings: the Sabatini building, constructed in the 18th century, and the Nouvel building, which was only completed in 2005.  The pictures below were taken in the courtyard of the Sabatini building, and I'll post pictures of the Nouvel building later today.

The Prado Museum, Madrid

The Prado, Spain's most visited art museum, was designed by architect Juan de Villanueva in 1785, and it was opened to the public in 1819.  Its collection focuses primarily on Spanish works from the 12th to the 18th century, featuring plenty of Goya and Velazquez (and more portraits of saints than I need to see in an entire lifetime).  My own taste runs much more toward modern and contemporary art--my favorite museum is the Reina Sofia, just a short walk from the Prado--but it was still great to see Velazquez's Las Meninas in person.  Well worth the visit, even if much of the collection isn't exactly my cup of tea.

"Prado" means "meadow"--an allusion to the museum's parklike setting.  Even though the city has grown up around the building, it's still beautiful, close to the city's botanic gardens and surrounded by fountains, sculptures, and green space.  The building itself is a satisfying neoclassical behemoth in central Madrid, as you can see below.

Jardines de Sabatini, Madrid

The grounds of Madrid's royal palace are a well-manicured garden dotted with sculptures and fountains, and in the evenings, the area is packed with people out strolling.  I wandered through at sunset one night and made friends with an elderly Spaniard whose English was even worse than my Spanish, but he showed me around very enthusiastically and tried to tell me all about the kings and queens immortalized there.  I don't think I understood more than a quarter of what he was trying to tell me (a *lot* about Ferdinand and Isabella) but we both had fun anyway.