Gaudí's Eixample: Passeig de Gràcia to Sant Pau: a self-guided walk
By Alleytale
Passeig de Gràcia to the Sagrada Família: Casa Batlló, La Pedrera and the Gaudí thread
Domènech i Montaner, Puig i Cadafalch and Gaudí each left houses along the way, and Gaudí's own thread runs through Casa Batlló, La Pedrera, his collaborator Jujol's corner house, the school he built for the workers' children and the Sagrada Família.
The stops
Francesca Morera hired Lluís Domènech i Montaner in 1902 to remodel the old Casa Rocamora, built in 1864, and the house is named for her son, Albert Lleó i Morera. Morera means mulberry tree, and the family's name returns in mulberry motifs from the courtyard to the door handles. When a shop refit in 1943 broke up Eusebi Arnau's ground-floor plant boxes and windows, the caretaker saved the women's heads, which were sold to Salvador Dalí, who set them in the courtyard of his museum in Figueres.
Photo: Thomas Ledl — CC BY-SA 4.0 The wealthy chocolatier Antoni Amatller hired Josep Puig i Cadafalch in 1898 to remake a house from 1875, and Puig gave it a stepped gable of Flemish inspiration and the look of an urban Gothic palace. That began a rivalry: Francesca Morera answered with Domènech i Montaner in 1902 and Josep Batlló with Gaudí in 1904, and the clash of styles gave the block its nickname, the Illa de la Discòrdia. Amatller's daughter lived here until her death in 1960, so the 1900 interior is largely preserved, and the house is now a historic house museum.
Photo: Kent Wang — CC BY-SA 2.0 The textile industrialist Josep Batlló hired Gaudí in 1904, the third of the block's rival commissions, and Gaudí persuaded him to remodel the existing house of 1877 instead of pulling it down. Much of its facade is covered in a mosaic of broken ceramic tiles, locals call it the House of Bones, and the arched roof is likened to a dragon's back, with the turret and cross read in a common theory as the lance of Saint George. The city council shortlisted it for its best-building award in 1906, but the prize went to another architect, and UNESCO listed the house in 2005.
Photo: Bernard Gagnon — CC BY-SA 3.0 Ramon Montaner commissioned this palace on Carrer de Mallorca from the architect Josep Domènech i Estapà, with the design dated 1889, but the two fell out after the ground floor and two storeys were built. Montaner's nephew, Lluís Domènech i Montaner, took over and did the third floor and the decoration, with help from the architect Antoni Maria Gallissà, including glazed mosaic panels under the eaves that show the invention of printing. Today the building houses the Spanish government's sub-delegation in Barcelona.
Photo: ca:user:amadalvarez — CC BY-SA 2.5 Casa Milà is better known as La Pedrera, the stone quarry, a nickname given by citizens who disapproved of its unusual look. It was the last private house Gaudí designed, built between 1906 and 1912 for Pere Milà and Roser Segimon, with a self-supporting stone facade free of load-bearing walls and an underground garage. Josep Maria Jujol, who worked with Gaudí here and at Casa Batlló, is the architect the design of the massive iron entrance gate is attributed to, and UNESCO listed the building in 1984.
Photo: Thomas Ledl — CC BY-SA 4.0 Josep Puig i Cadafalch built this small palace between 1904 and 1906 by thoroughly renovating an existing house on a narrow plot, giving it two facades, one on the Diagonal and one on Carrer de Rosselló. The Diagonal facade has one of the most impressive Gothic revival balconies in Modernisme, carved in stone by Alfons Juyol and Eusebi Arnau. After a restoration in 1980 it housed the Music Museum of Barcelona until 2001, and today it holds the main offices of the Institut Ramon Llull, which promotes Catalan language and culture abroad.
Photo: Josep Panadero — CC BY 2.5 Puig i Cadafalch designed this as three houses for the Terradas sisters, Àngela, Josefa and Rosa, on a triangular plot, yet he made them read as a single castle-like building. Six pointed towers crowned by conical spikes gave it its popular name, Casa de les Punxes. On the Carrer de Rosselló side a ceramic panel shows Saint George slaying the dragon, and a sculpted face just below it is the architect himself.
Photo: Mutari — Public domain Puig i Cadafalch designed this house on Passeig de Sant Joan for the industrialist and glass collector Macaya i Gibert, and it was built between 1898 and 1900. Its white facade carries ochre sgraffito by Joan Paradís, and the stone carving is by Eusebi Arnau and Alfons Jujol. A capital left of the main door shows a cyclist, said to be the sculptor's nod to Puig i Cadafalch, who cycled between this site and Casa Amatller while both were being built.
Photo: Canaan — CC BY-SA 4.0 Josep Maria Jujol designed this corner house on the Diagonal in 1924 for the builder Evelí Planells. Jujol, who had worked with Gaudí on Casa Batlló and Casa Milà, used curves and little facade decoration on a very small plot, and the writer Lluís Permanyer said he went his own way and is hard to place. Some authors link the building to German Expressionism, for example the work of Erich Mendelsohn.
Photo: Amadalvarez — CC BY-SA 3.0 Gaudí built this small school in 1909 for the children of the workers building the Sagrada Família, though other children of the neighbourhood, especially poor ones, went too. Its brick walls and roof ripple in a wave, a form later applied by architects such as Le Corbusier and Santiago Calatrava. In 2002 the building was taken down and moved to the southern corner of the site, between Carrer de Sardenya and Carrer de Mallorca, to free its original spot for the basilica.
Photo: Canaan — CC BY-SA 4.0 Work began in 1882 under another architect, Francisco de Paula del Villar, and Gaudí took over in 1883 and devoted the rest of his life to the church; he is buried in its crypt. When he died in 1926 less than a quarter of it was complete, and the building has depended on private donations. Gaudí designed the central Tower of Jesus Christ to stand one metre lower than Montjuïc hill, and in February 2026 it reached its full height of 172.5 metres, making the basilica the tallest church in the world.
Photo: Canaan — CC BY-SA 4.0 This avenue, opened in 1927, cuts diagonally across the Eixample grid to link the Sagrada Família and the Hospital de Sant Pau, with the basilica's Nativity facade and apse at one end and the hospital's main facade at the other. It opened as Avinguda del General Primo de Rivera and took Gaudí's name in 1931; after the Civil War the old name came back, but Gaudí's had stuck with the public and became official in 1962. Six modernista lamp-posts by Pere Falqués, dated 1909, stand at the ends of its first three stretches, moved here in 1985 from the Plaça del Cinc d'Oros, where they had been removed in 1957 for obstructing traffic.
Photo: Robert Rutkowski — CC BY 3.0 Lluís Domènech i Montaner's hospital, built between 1901 and 1930, is the largest complex built in Art Nouveau style. The hospital itself dates to 1401, when six small medieval hospitals merged, and Sant Pau was added to its name in honour of the banker Pau Gil, who paid for the new buildings. It worked as a hospital until June 2009 and reopened as a museum and cultural centre in 2014, and UNESCO listed it with the Palau de la Música Catalana in 1997.
Photo: Matinibz — CC BY-SA 3.0
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