A park where no one bothers looking at the greenery

We love to visit parks to see plantings, trees, and birds, but that’s beside the point at Barcelona’s Park Güell. Everyone makes the trek up to Park Güell for one thing: to take in Antoni Gaudi’s inspired conception of what was supposed to become a 60-lot housing development on a barren hill in the early 1900’s.

Viaducts were built as roadways on the hillside with walkways underneath.

The Portico of the Laundress is a “colonnaded pathway where the road projects out from the hillside, with the vaulting forming a retaining wall which curves over to support the road, and transmits the load onto sloping columns”. (Thanks to Wikipedia for that explanation.)

We took stairs up to a large open plaza with a serpentine bench ringing the exterior. We visitors gathered for the view and to sit on the tiled bench.

We walked back down steps to discover what was holding up the bench and part of that open plaza where we’d just been: massive columns with tiled mosaics on the roof.

A fence becomes a decorative garden art-piece.

The Porter’s Lodge windows are ringed with orbs of colorful tile.

Who wouldn’t want to live in Park Güell? Apparently, Barcelonians showed no interest in living there in the early 1900’s. Only Gaudi and Eusebi Güell, Gaudi’s patron and owner of the land, lived in the park. After Eusebi Güell’s death, his heirs sold the park to the city, and Park Güell opened to the public as a civic park in 1926.

Gaudi’s failure in developing a property that would attract potential homeowners has blossomed into a highly successful city park and tourist attraction. A visit to this park shouldn’t be mistaken for a visit to a classical garden. When we pored over photos that we took during our visit to Park Güell, only a paltry two images were of the greenery.

 

October 2014