Barcelona
Price €109
Min age 0
Rating 4.79 / 5 [4211 ratings]
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Travel bucket list idea:
Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
Gaudi’s Park Guell
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.
You can take the metro to Lesseps station, but then it’s a 20-minute walk up a steep hill. A taxi may be a better bet (it’s a 10-minute ride from the centre), and it’s usually fairly easy to find one to take you home again. If you have a ticket for the hop-on-hop-off bus, it stops nearby on Travessera de Dalt. The paths in the park are accessible but some are fairly steep, and there is a steep hill from where the buses stop (including the hop on hop off bus) to the entrance.
Park Güell only allows entry to 400 people every 30 minutes, so book a ticket online well in advance or risk waiting around at the entrance (or not getting in at all). Once inside, you’re free to wander around at will – the park’s website offers an app guide and a map to download. There are some pretty cafes and souvenir shops in the streets just south of the park.
Barcelona’s outdoor sights are mildest and most pleasant in spring and autumn – July and August get too warm for walking around in the heat of the day. Avoid the crowds by getting to the Park when it opens at 10am, or an hour before closing.
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Our writer’s recommended tour operators to book with
Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
TourOperator
Barcelona Event OrganizationCan arrange corporate VIP services, hotels and restaurant bookings, private chauffers, helicopter transfers, tickets to Camp Nou, private shopping or personal assistants and yacht hire, etc.