The Cascada: Where the Young Gaudí Learned His Trade
Why is it significant?
Climb up the wide steps towards the monumental fountain and let it fill your view: rocks, grottoes, a triumphal arch of stone, water tumbling into a pool, griffins, and right at the top a golden chariot pulled by galloping horses. It is less a fountain than a stage set, an opera in stone.
Key Facts
| Place | The Cascada: Where the Young Gaudí Learned His Trade |
|---|---|
| Address | Parc de la Ciutadella, Passeig de Picasso, 08003 Barcelona, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.39010, 2.18650 |
| Part of Walk | From the 1888 Expo to the Catalan Manchester: Ciutadella Park & Poblenou, Barcelona |
| Generated | Generated |
Climb up the wide steps towards the monumental fountain and let it fill your view: rocks, grottoes, a triumphal arch of stone, water tumbling into a pool, griffins, and right at the top a golden chariot pulled by galloping horses. It is less a fountain than a stage set, an opera in stone.
When the military fortress was torn down, the city held a competition to design a park on its land, and the winner was the master builder Josep Fontserè. His project carried a motto that still sounds modern: gardens are to cities what lungs are to the human body. The Cascada was the centrepiece of his park, built in the 1870s and 1880s, and finished in time for the exposition of 1888.
Among the people working for Fontserè was an architecture student from Reus, Antoni Gaudí. He is credited with helping on the cascade's hydraulic design and on some of its decorative details. It is fun to stand here and look for the future in it: the artificial rocks and grottoes, the love of water and of nature imitated in stone... Thirty years later, in Park Güell, Gaudí would make rocks look like trees and trees look like rocks.
Now walk round to the left of the lake, beyond the boats, and you will meet the most unexpected resident of the park: a life-size stone mammoth, raising its trunk among the trees. It was sculpted in the early twentieth century, and the story goes that it was meant to be the first of a whole series of prehistoric animals that was never completed. Children climb on it; scientists point out that it was modelled on what people then believed a mammoth looked like.
Just behind these lawns lies the city zoo, where for almost forty years Barcelona's most famous resident lived: Snowflake, the only known albino gorilla, who died in 2003. Now cross the park towards the long, elegant building with a pond and a statue of a sleeping woman in front of it.