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Primary sourceArtifactremodelled 1904-1906

Casa Batlló

Antoni Gaudí · remodelled 1904-1906

A dramatic remodelling of an existing Barcelona house, with a mosaic façade and dragon-like roof, done by Gaudí for the textile magnate Josep Batlló.

Gaudí redesigned this house for Josep Batlló, giving it his signature mosaic façade and sculptural forms.

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Evening view of Casa Batlló in Barcelona, a building with a wavy, mosaic-covered facade in blues and greens, a bone-like balcony structure, and a tiled roof topped by a cross. Pedestrians and trees stand in the street below.
Antoni Gaudí, Casa Batlló, remodelled 1904-1906. Barcelona, Spain.

About this source

What it is

Casa Batlló is a building on Barcelona's Passeig de Gràcia, originally constructed in 1877. In 1904 the textile industrialist Josep Batlló hired Antoni Gaudí to remodel it; the renovation was finished in 1906, with assistants Domènec Sugrañes, Josep Canaleta and Joan Rubió contributing. Gaudí reworked the facade with colourful broken-tile mosaic (trencadís) and sculpted stonework.

Why it matters

The house sits on a block nicknamed the 'Block of Discord' because wealthy Barcelona families competed to build the most striking house on the street, each hiring a different Modernista architect. Casa Batlló shows how architecture became a tool for industrialists like Batlló to display wealth and status, and how Gaudí used colour and organic form instead of straight lines and classical rules.

Look closer

  • What might the wavy, bone-like shapes on the facade have been meant to suggest?
  • Why would a wealthy family want a house that stood out so dramatically from its neighbours?
  • How does this building compare in style with the other houses on the same block?

This artifact is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Antonio Gaudí on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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