Gaudí's Cosmos

Nineteenth-century Barcelona tore down its medieval walls and built a new city on the plain beyond. The Catalans who paid for it wanted a style of their own, and Modernisme was the answer: curved, tiled, drawn from nature instead of the classical rulebook. Antoni Gaudí went furthest. His columns lean because trees lean, and he worked out his structures by hanging chains upside down and letting gravity draw the arch. He died in 1926 under a tram, unrecognised at first because of his shabby clothes, his largest work barely begun. This walk runs from the first house he built to the palace where he met the patron who funded everything after, by way of the Sagrada Família, finished at last almost a century after his death.

Practical. Six stops, roughly five kilometres, flat apart from the climb to Park Güell. Park Güell's monumental zone is advance-booking only at €13 with no walk-up tickets, and entry is a timed 30-minute window capped at 1,400 visitors an hour; peak slots go 48 to 72 hours ahead, so book one to two weeks out for a weekend. Once you are inside you can stay until closing — 19:30 April to October, 17:30 November to March, last entry half an hour before. Casa Vicens is the easiest of the houses, often available same day off-season, though book ahead between March and October. Buy Sagrada Família and Casa Batlló online well before you travel. Expect 2026 to be busier than a normal year: the basilica was completed in February and it is the centenary of Gaudí's death.