Barcelona’s best architecture

Barcelonans, understandably, call it a ‘giant suppository’. Designed in 2005 by French architect Jean Nouvel, it features an innovative, shimmering skin of 4,500 LED lights that display delightful, infinitely varied coloured patterns.

This massive pile is Catalan Gothic at its most grandiose, full of wonders: lavishly ornate chapels, Renaissance sculpted choir stalls, and the crypt of patron saint Eulalia. The cloister is especially charming, and you can climb to the rooftop for panoramic views of the city.

There are three Modernista masterpieces in a single block on the Passeig de Gracia, but Gaudi’s Casa Batllo (1906), a shimmering, colour-drenched townhouse designed as an allegory of a dragon, is the most astonishing.

Commissioned by textile industrialist Josep Batllo when Gaudi was at his artistic best, this dazzling widely acclaimed Modernista masterpiece is now a UNESCO-listed World Heritage Site.

The facade is especially beautiful, and though it’s expensive to tour the interior, it’s even more magical inside: brightly tiled, fluid-looking and full of art.

One highlight is the open-air rooftop, where you can admire the bold, surreal chimney stacks and snap photos of the city.

The first private home Gaudi designed, this bright Orientalist building only opened to the public in 2017, so it’s a relatively new addition to Barcelona’s Modernista scene – as such, its brightly-tiled and painted interior is often blissfully quiet.

Officially known as Casa Mila, but immediately dubbed La Pedrera, ‘the stone quarry’ by critics, this extraordinary apartment block was Gaudi’s last building before he devoted the rest of his life to the Sagrada Familia.

It’s hard to imagine a more spectacular swan song, with a façade inspired by a sea cliff, complete with fantastical forged iron balconies resembling seaweed. The famous stepped roof features twenty-eight colourful chimneys – known as espanta bruixes (witch-scarers).

It marked the culmination of his experimentation with natural forms, and it’s been called the precursor of Surrealism, Expressionism and Cubism.

One of the original apartments, with no right angles anywhere and where Gaudi designed every single detail down to the doorknobs, is part of the visit.

Barcelona’s Gothic jewel was built in the 14th century by the sea-faring community in only 50 years – hence its rare stylistic harmony. During the Spanish Civil War, its accumulated Baroque decorations burned, leaving behind the bare bones of its sublime interior.

Frank Gehry’s giant ‘flying fish’ (some say goldfish or even whale) was built for the 1992 Olympics and to adorn the newly regenerated port area. At 56 metres long, 35 metres high, with shimmering gold scales that change colour with the light, it’s become a well-loved city landmark.

Ponderous and strange, Gaudi’s Art Nouveau town palace, commissioned in 1886 by the oligarch Eusebi Guell, is full of astonishing innovations, from its sweeping ramp to the subterranean stables, lofty parabolic cupola, and chimney sculptures covered in broken tiles.

In 1902, Eusebi Guell bought two farms set on a natural balcony and commissioned Gaudi to create an exclusive walled housing estate. It flopped, but Park Guell has never failed to enchant as a city park.

Enjoy the fairytale guardian’s houses, mosaic lizard, sinuous stone viaducts, 86-columned Sala Hipostila – the base for an extraordinary, broken tile-clad serpentine bench by Gaudi’s collaborator, Jujol – and sweeping panoramic views across Barcelona.

Gaudi actually bought one of the three houses in the park and lived there from 1906 to 1925, before moving to a hut by the Sagrada Familia. It’s now a museum.

Although it may seem whimsical, Gaudi and Guell loaded the park with allegories and symbolism, some personal, some Rosicrucian, alchemical and mythological. It is much, much stranger than it looks.

This hospital complex (1902-30), designed by Domenech i Montaner, is a cherished icon of the Modernista style. A World Heritage site, patients are still treated here, its enchanted pavilions glittering with colourful mosaics, tiles and sculpture.

Gaudí spent his last years obsessing over the Sagrada Família, this ornate, turreted cathedral with its iconic turrets like melting candles.

Although only the Birth Façade and crypt were completed before he died, and nearly all the plans were lost during the Spanish Civil War, the foundation that owns it has decided to carry on building it according to Gaudi’s surviving drawings.

Funded by ticket admissions, it’s already, even critics admit, the most spectacular church of the 21st century. But it’s quite a labour of love – it’s slated to be finished by 2026.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s 1929 masterpiece was revolutionary for its simple form and spectacular use of extravagant materials, such as travertine and marble. It has inspired many important Modernist buildings since.

One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, Barcelona native Joan Miro commissioned his good friend Josep Lluis Sert to design a museum for contemporary art bathed in natural light.

Inside (and out on the terraces, overlooking Barcelona) are Miro’s own playful, surreal, brilliantly colourful paintings, sculptures and textiles, as well as works by other major artists (notably Alexander Calder’s Mercury Fountain).

The Foundation also hosts some of the city’s top temporary exhibitions.

Catalan’s gorgeous Modernista concert hall, Palau de la Musica, is a must-see for its extraordinary architecture alone. Designed by Lluis Domenech i Montaner, the palace mesmerises with intricate ornamentation, stained glass windows, and lavish interiors. Today, it serves as a vibrant cultural venue hosting a variety of concerts, operas, and choral performances.

The city’s oldest covered market was rebuilt in 2005, and crowned with an undulating roof of multicoloured tiles, a dazzling 21st-century response to Gaudí’s use of trencadi broken tiles.