Park Güell

Conceived around 1900 by industrialist Eusebi Güell as an English-style garden city of sixty luxury villas on a hillside above Barcelona, the project was a commercial flop—only two houses sold—and was abandoned by 1914. What Gaudí left behind, however, was a dreamscape: a serpentine bench tiled in shattered ceramic 'trencadís,' a mosaic salamander guarding a grand staircase, and columned halls that mimic a stone forest. Gaudí himself lived in one of the show houses for two decades. The city acquired the estate and opened it as a public park in 1926, and its swirling colours became one of the most recognisable images of Catalan Modernisme.