Category: Découvrir la France

Post by Ella We are on our way back to the States. Reluctantly. Waiting in Atlanta for the final flight. I usually try for a wrap up at the end of each trip. Grubb describes the trip as a medieval to modern Gothic journey crowded with ghosts. I describe it in bits. The French love…

Post by Ella Some random photos.

After the overwhelming experience of Gaudí’s La Familia Sagrada, we thought we’d come back to earth by visiting Casa Vicens, the house he built in the 1880s.   It had a nice mixture of oriental modernist design. I loved the tiled turrets rising above the top floor veranda. It just proved there were places for sublime…

I was ready to visit Gaudí’s famous chapel on our last day in Barcelona.  I figured a modern Gothic landmark would be a nice capstone to our trip.  But I’ve always been influenced by photos of the exterior and the design seemed too busy in an ornamental way.  And when we approached the building, the dull brown terra…

Post by Ella Perhaps Gaudi’s finest. A giant of a basilica. Construction begun in the late 1800s and is ongoing today with a target completion of 2026. The largest unfinished Catholic Church in the world. On the outside, the most distinctive and creative interpretation of Gothic architecture ever, anywhere. Every curve, every line flows. Sculptural…

Post by Ella On our way to the Museo Nacional d’Art Catalunya the other day, I noticed an elevator going up to the rooftop of the distinctive Las Arenas de Barcelona. Now shopping complex, it was once a bullfighting arena but was reconstructed in 2011 for less violent activities. Who doesn’t love a glass elevator…

Post by Ella It seems one can’t walk more than a block in Barcelona without seeing reference to the famous Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi (1852 – 1926). Known as a Catalan modernist, his style is distinctive.  Yesterday we headed to the hills to explore Park Güell, a park designed by Gaudi in 1900.  We opted out…

The Museu National d’Art de Catalunya had quite a lead up with an avenue of decorated steps rising to the terraced columnar entrance below its dome.  The approach was a cross between Versailles and Monte Carlo. The museum had the size of one of Chicago’s Columbian Exposition buildings.  Inside it was sectioned off into four large gallery…

Post by Ella For my maritime loving cousin.

Today (Saturday) was a different story when it came to wandering the streets of Barcelona.  There was breathing room to the boulevards and back alleys.  It was like a stadium full of people had been dispersed through a multiplicity of exits and spread out.   We paused at a building designed by Gaudi where a crowd was waiting…