Barcelona

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La Pedrera (Casa Milà)

Passeig de Gràcia 92-C/Provença 261-5

The last secular building designed by Antoni Gaudí, the Casa Milà (usually referred to as La Pedrera, ‘the stone quarry’) is a stupendous and daring feat of architecture, the culmination of the architect’s experimental attempts to recreate natural forms with bricks and mortar. Its marine feel is complemented by Jujol’s tangled balconies, doors of twisted kelp ribbon, sea-foamy ceilings and interior patios as blue as a mermaid’s cave. Ridiculed when it was completed in 1912, it has become one of Barcelona’s best loved buildings, and is adored by architects for its extraordinary structure: it is supported entirely by pillars, without a single master wall, allowing the vast asymmetrical windows of the façade to invite in great swathes of natural light.

There are three exhibition spaces. The first-floor art gallery hosts free exhibitions of eminent artists, you can visit a reconstructed Modernista flat on the fourth floor, and the attic holds a museum dedicated to an insightful overview of Gaudí’s career. Best of all is the chance to stroll on the roof of the building amid its trencadís-covered ventilation shafts: their heads are shaped like the helmets of medieval knights, which led the poet Pere Gimferrer to dub the spot ‘the garden of warriors’.

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