Gaudí's Tiles and Falqués's Benches
Why is it significant?
Look down. The grey hexagonal paving stones under your feet are not ordinary. Each one carries a design in relief: a starfish, a spiral shell like an ammonite, a curl of seaweed. Fit three of them together and the patterns flow into each other like a patch of seabed.
Key Facts
| Place | Gaudí's Tiles and Falqués's Benches |
|---|---|
| Address | Passeig de Gràcia 66, 08008 Barcelona, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.39310, 2.16430 |
| Part of Walk | The Block of Discord: Barcelona's Passeig de Gràcia and the Modernista Rivalry |
| Generated | Generated |
Look down. The grey hexagonal paving stones under your feet are not ordinary. Each one carries a design in relief: a starfish, a spiral shell like an ammonite, a curl of seaweed. Fit three of them together and the patterns flow into each other like a patch of seabed.
This is Gaudí's tile, the panot de Gaudí. He designed it in the early years of the twentieth century for Casa Batlló, but by the time it was ready that house was already finished, so he used it in Casa Milà, a few blocks up the avenue, indoors. For decades it lived out of sight. Then in 1997 the city paved the whole of Passeig de Gràcia with a grey version of it, and Gaudí's little piece of the sea came out onto the street.
Now sit down, if you like, on one of the curving benches along the avenue. They are wrapped in trencadís, broken ceramic set in mortar, and each one sprouts a tall wrought-iron lamp post. They look so much like Gaudí that most people assume they are his. They are not. They were designed in 1906 by Pere Falqués, an architect who worked for the City Council, a Modernista in his own right whose name almost nobody remembers.
There is one more pavement worth knowing. Away from this avenue, many of Barcelona's sidewalks use another tile, a square grey panot with a four-petal flower. It is so common that it has become an unofficial emblem of the city, printed on souvenirs, notebooks and bags. In Barcelona, even the ground has a design history.
So the avenue you are walking was planned by an engineer, paved by Gaudí and furnished by Falqués, while the bankers and industrialists who lived along it argued about whose façade was finest. Now leave the avenue for a few minutes. Walk two blocks east to Carrer de Mallorca, where a palace of brick and mosaic hides on a side street.