Colònia Güell, Gaudí's crypt and the workers' colony: a self-guided walk
By Alleytale
The workers' colony and Gaudí's unfinished church
Güell gave the colony's plan to Gaudí, who took the church for himself, and his collaborators Francesc Berenguer and Joan Rubió built much of what stands around it, so crypt, cooperative, houses and school share the same hands, brick and stone.
The stops
Colònia Güell station opened in 2000 on the FGC Llobregat-Anoia line, where the S3, S4, S8 and S9 trains stop, close to the colony known for Gaudí's crypt. The colony itself dates from March 1890, when Eusebi Güell and his partner Ferran Alsina laid the first stone of a new factory for corduroy and velvet, and production began in 1891. The idea was to let the workers live in a rural setting and so avoid the social tensions of Barcelona.
Photo: 9pm — CC BY-SA 4.0 Francesc Berenguer i Bellvehí, son of Gaudí's assistant Francesc Berenguer i Mestres, designed this parish house for Father Gaspar Vilarrubias, the colony's chaplain, and it was built in 1917. It has served worship at the crypt. Its walls are faced in irregular slabs of stone, with exposed brick marking the corners, the base and a row of small arches on the upper floor. Because it stands free on every side, the same materials and ornament run round all four walls.
Photo: Enric — CC BY-SA 4.0 Count Eusebi Güell enlisted Gaudí for the colony's church in 1898, but work did not begin until 1908, and only the crypt was ever completed; it is now part of the UNESCO-listed Works of Antoni Gaudí. To work out its curves Gaudí hung hemp ropes weighted with lead-filled sacks in a model at 1:10 scale, then photographed it, flipped the image and traced over it. Look for the ceramic panel above the entrance, which shows the four cardinal virtues each with its own symbol, and for the fish that decorate the crypt, an old symbol of Jesus.
Photo: rob Stoeltje from loenen, netherlands — CC BY 2.0 Designed in 1894, this private house is credited to Francesc Berenguer i Mestres and Joan Rubió i Bellver, two of the assistants who helped Gaudí plan the colony. It is built of stone conglomerate with rounded corners and brick-framed windows, and the basement level at the front was turned into a garden. Look for the three ornate chimneys that flank it, and for the back, built on several levels with something of a Romanesque church about it.
Photo: Kent Wang — CC BY 4.0 The colony's cooperative was built in 1900 by Francesc Berenguer i Mestres with Joan Rubió. It keeps to the colony's brick modernisme while standing out for its height and the harmony of its exposed-brick decoration. By the 1980s it was a warehouse and food shop with a social club upstairs, and its page says it now houses the colony's information office and permanent exhibition, where a reproduction of the stereostatic model Gaudí devised for the church is a highlight.
Photo: Enfo — CC BY-SA 3.0 This ensemble of houses in the colony is built in plain exposed brick laid in horizontal courses, with a small garden in front of each behind a low wall. A row of vertical bricks breaks up the two main storeys, and a projecting band under the tiled eaves stresses the horizontal lines. At number 23, on a corner, look for the staircase hung out over the street and closed in like a medieval tower.
Photo: Enric — CC BY-SA 4.0 Francesc Berenguer i Bellvehí built this centre between 1915 and 1917, first as a girls' school and the seat of the Workers' Patronage of the Holy Family. After the Civil War part of it became a library, to which Manuel Folguera i Duran gave his personal collection; he was the father of the poet Joaquim Folguera i Poal. Of exposed brick and render, its long facade has strongly horizontal lines broken by vertical strips of brick, in the style of industrial modernisme.
Photo: Enric — CC BY-SA 4.0 This pair of buildings, a theatre and an attached café, was where the colony came together: its page says the café's talk and card games were, with amateur or professional theatre, the usual entertainment early in the 20th century. One witness is quoted as saying that if Catalans do not go to the theatre much, it is because they are all up on the stage. The theatre front keeps wrought ironwork dated 1903 and a simple sgraffito band, shaped like a pediment, that frames its name and its date of construction.
Photo: Enric — CC BY-SA 4.0 Joan Rubió signed this house, dated 1900 in the ironwork of its entrance, on the corner of Carrer de Monturiol and Carrer de Malvehy. Gaudí's influence is clear in the Gothic touches, a style he was fond of, such as the corner turret balcony and the single and paired windows upstairs, all worked in brick and straight lines. It stands at the top of a steeply rising street, as the crypt and the school do.
Photo: Kent Wang — CC BY 4.0 Francesc Berenguer i Mestres, one of Gaudí's assistants, planned this school together with the neighbouring Casa del Mestre, the teacher's house, and the two are joined by a bridge. The school stands apart from the rest of the colony in its materials and layout: irregular in plan, clad in stone slabs, with brick picking out the openings and the band under the eaves, plenty of windows to help the children's work, and a place at the colony's edge among pines. The teacher's house, with its tower and green and black glazed roof, looks like a magic castle, and its chimney carries the date 1911 in glazed ceramic.
Photo: Pere López Brosa — CC BY-SA 4.0
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