Your private guide and driver will meet you at your hotel and take you to visit three of Gaudí’s most renowned works. From buildings that look as if they’ve come from storybooks to twisting lampposts that defy expectation, the city is littered with elements that all owe their origins to his masterful design.
Your first stop is a visit to the Casa Milà apartment blocks, often referred to as La Pedrera (meaning ‘the stone quarry’) due to its rippling stone exterior. It sits on one of Barcelona’s most affluent boulevards, Passeig de Gràcia, which was part of the new Modernist district, L’Eixample, built in the early 19th century.
A top-floor apartment, the attic and the roof are open to the public, with the rooftop stealing the show with its chimney pots topped with sculpted heads. The attic contains a museum dedicated to Gaudí’s work, and the apartment showcases the curving, sinuous design elements for which he’s best known.
The next stop on the tour is Park Güell, an unfinished housing development that became a municipal park on what was then the outskirts of the city. The entrance is flanked by two fairy-tale houses and leads to a playful park landscape pitted with steps, terraces and curving pathways. They’re flanked by vibrant mosaics and idiosyncratic details such as sloping walls, a giant mosaic-covered salamander and wave-like seating offering views over the city below.
Your final stop of the day is the jewel in Barcelona’s crown, the unfinished Sagrada Família, still under construction after more than 130 years. This was Gaudí’s most ambitious and flamboyant project, a basilica that would break with tradition and challenge all preconceptions about church design.
Its medley of organic shapes, free-flowing curves, bright mosaic work, soaring towers and intricate detail is arresting and absorbing in equal measure, and the Sagrada Família has become the city’s most significant landmark.
Once you’ve toured the basilica in the company of your guide, your driver will take you back to your hotel.