Casa Vicens: Gaudí's First House
Why is it significant?
Halfway along this narrow street a house bursts out of the row like a firework: walls striped with green and white tiles, rows of yellow flowers painted on ceramic, little turrets and balconies, and an iron fence made of fan-shaped palm leaves.
Key Facts
| Place | Casa Vicens: Gaudí's First House |
|---|---|
| Address | Carrer de les Carolines 20-26, 08012 Barcelona, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.40350, 2.15060 |
| Part of Walk | Gràcia, the Village Inside Barcelona: Squares, Rebels and Gaudí's First House |
| Generated | Generated |
Halfway along this narrow street a house bursts out of the row like a firework: walls striped with green and white tiles, rows of yellow flowers painted on ceramic, little turrets and balconies, and an iron fence made of fan-shaped palm leaves. This is Casa Vicens, the first house Antoni Gaudí ever built.
It was designed in 1883 for Manuel Vicens, a stockbroker who wanted a summer home in what was then still semi-rural Gràcia, and it was built between 1883 and 1885. Gaudí was barely thirty. There is no dragon here yet, no melting stone, no broken-tile mosaic. Instead he looked to the Islamic heritage of Spain and to the Orient: brick, tile and timber in a fantasy close to the neo-Mudéjar style fashionable at the time.
The story goes that when Gaudí first visited the plot, he found it covered with yellow flowers, African marigolds, and shaded by a dwarf palm. He put both into the house: the marigolds onto the tiles of the façade, and the palm leaves into the cast iron of the railings. Whether or not the tale is true, the house really does feel like a garden that turned into architecture.
It lived a long life as a private home. It was enlarged in 1925 by another architect, part of its garden was sold, and the city grew up tight around it. Only in 2017 did it open to the public as a museum. Since 2005 it has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage listing of Gaudí's works.
Even the street has a story. Carrer de les Carolines is named after the Caroline Islands in the Pacific, over which Spain and Germany quarrelled in 1885, just as this house was being finished. Gràcia names streets after faraway crises the way other places name them after saints. Now go back to Gran de Gràcia and follow it uphill to Plaça de Lesseps and the church that gave this whole neighbourhood its name.