Park Guell Barcelona - Stunning Views! Editorial Image

Park Güell, intended to serve Güell’s private city, became all of Barcelona’s, then the world’s favourite. Gaudi let loose his imagination. While for houses he drew on natural forms, here he shaped nature into colonnades, archways and covered galleries with well-camouflaged artificial structures. It’s a playground for the mind: visual jokes, like columns that simulate palm-tree trunks, rubble-surfaced arches that grow out of the ground, quilts of ceramic tiles. A graceful gazebo is made of twisted angle iron – cheap to make, looks good, does not lie about its material yet its shape is as softly curved as climbing vines. The centrepiece is the intended covered market, a majestic forest of fluted columns. Its roof forms a vast terrace with a view of the city. It’s surrounded by an undulating continuous bench, the back of which forms a balustrade, its entire surface encrusted with ceramic shards of all colours, some randomly arranged, some in patterns. The seat is unusually comfortable for a stone bench: Gaudi had a workman drop his pants and sit in soft plaster to record the correct anatomical curve – foreshadowing the science of ergonomics by half a century. Past the entrance a smiling dragon stretches in the middle of the divided stairway. Children love it and few adult visitors can resist patting the beast on the head – the park has that kind of spirit.