Antoni Gaudí is one of the prime examples of an artist who was ahead of his time, misunderstood by his contemporaries. Park Güell was the brainchild of Eusebi Güell a powerful Catalan magnate and lover of the fine arts who bought up some land on the Hill of Carmel in 1900 to create a housing development that would imitate the English model of a garden-city, sprinkled with a few houses for people of great purchasing power. The development involved the creation of three kilometres of paths, one square, many stairways, the caretakers’ pavilion and even a pilot house to woo in clients. No one wanted to buy this pilot house so Gaudí himself purchased it in 1906, living there until he moved into the basement levels of his masterwork, the Sagrada Familia in 1926. The house is now the Museo Gaudí.

The curious little house that we run straight into at the park entrance makes it quite clear we are now entering a wonderful world of makebelieve. This was originally the caretakers’ house and is now run as the visitors’ centre. From there a stairway leads into the park, adorned with one of the symbols of Barcelona: the famous polychrome dragon studded with broken tile shards. This technique, so characteristic of Gaudí’s way of working, is known as trencadis, i.e., a mosaic of tile shards or fragments of other materials, taken from the waste product of other constructions or purposely broken up ad hoc. A lot of this construction was the work of Josep Maria Jujol, one of Gaudí’s most talented helpers and disciples.

At the top of the stairway is the Hypostyle Hall, a stone woodland formed by 86 columns and originally designed as the marketplace. A little higher up comes the GranPlaza, with exquisite views over the city of Barcelona. The whole perimeter of the Plaza is bound by a trencadis-covered rippling bench. It is not only the bench that ripples, all the park’s paths do too, as well as the arcades and viaducts.