La Pedrera (Casa Milà)

Palace · Eixample (Passeig de Gràcia)Barcelona, Spain

La Pedrera's rippling stone front hangs from iron beams instead of holding the building up. No wall inside carries any weight either, so the rooms of a flat can be moved or knocked through at will. Gaudí built it between 1906 and 1912 for Pere Milà and Roser Segimon, and the city, unimpressed by the raw quarried look, named it after a stone pit. The blocks were hoisted up and carved in place on the scaffolding so the curve would run unbroken; Josep Maria Jujol twisted the balcony rails out of scrap iron, no two alike. Cars were designed in from the start: the basement was drawn as a garage, among the first under any Barcelona apartment block. What you climb for is the roof. The terrace rises and falls in steps, and the chimneys and ventilation towers that come up through it are each twisted into a different shape and turned a different way, so they stand around you like helmeted figures. Below them the attic runs on 270 brick arches, and the long room they carry was once where the tenants dried their washing. It never became only a museum: people still live and work behind those windows, and the stone shifts from grey to honey as the day turns.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Read it from the far pavement — cross Passeig de Gràcia before you look. From underneath it reads as rough rock; from across the street the balconies line up into one slow wave.
Follow the stone round into Carrer de Provença — the façade turns the corner without a joint or a straight edge, and the pavement crowd thins within twenty metres.
The roof works late in the day — Low sun gives the chimney figures edges and shadows; at midday they flatten into pale lumps and the terrace glare washes everything out.
Half of it is somebody's home — Keep your voice down in the courtyards — sound runs straight up the light wells into flats and offices in daily use.

Things to do

1
Walk the whole rooftop loop
Take the full circuit of the terrace rather than stopping at the first group of figures. Notice how the paving steps up and down as you go. Find the group clad in broken glass, then stand inside one of the arched stair exits and use its opening to frame the Sagrada Família in the distance.
2
Stand under the brick ribs
On the floor below the roof, stop midway along the attic and look down its length. The arches change height as they run, so the space narrows and swells as you walk. Then match what you see to the terrace above: its steps are the backs of these arches.
3
Look straight up from the courtyards
Before you take the stairs, stand at the bottom of each of the two courtyards and look straight up. One is close to round, the other oval, and both open onto a ring of sky far above. The painted decoration climbs the whole shaft; step clear of the doorway traffic and give it a slow minute.
4
Read the building in metal
Walk the façade at eye level and look only at metal. Pick two balconies and find where their forms differ most — one may read as seaweed, the next as a knot of vines. Then stop at the main entrance gate: a mesh of iron and glass in irregular bubble-shaped panes, nothing like the heavy stone around it.