Private tour of Passeig de Gràcia with an official guide

The square that connects the Old Town with the Eixample is the result of successive urban planning interventions between 1888 and 1927. The guide explains the Cerdà Plan of 1859 -the Eixample grid, the 45-degree chamfers, the blocks with landscaped interiors that real estate speculation eliminated- and why Passeig de Gràcia became the representative axis of the Catalan bourgeoisie that financed Modernisme.

The bluish-gray hexagonal tiles that cover the sidewalks of the promenade were designed by Antoni Gaudí in 1904 for the floor of the Casa Batlló. Pieces were left over and the City Council spread them all over the promenade. The guide points out the three motifs in the design – starfish, fish and octopus – and their relationship to the marine bestiary that appears in Gaudí’s other works.

The least photographed building of the Manzana de la Discordia and the most punished by later reforms: the first floor was demolished in the 1940s to install a handbag store. On the upper façade survive the mosaics by Lluís Bru and the sculpture by Eusebi Arnau -the best artists of Modernisme in their respective disciplines-, and the corner with the allegorical figure of the lady holding an electric light bulb: an explicit reference to the electrification of Barcelona in those years.

Antoni Amatller was a chocolate manufacturer and collector of photography. Puig i Cadafalch designed for him a palace with a Flemish-influenced facade – the stepped gables that crown the building were seen by the architect on his travels in Belgium and the Netherlands – and a sculptural program by Eusebi Arnau in which the characters in the doorway carry musical instruments and practice arts and crafts: the statement of an enlightened patron, not a nouveau riche. The guide shows the dragon devouring a man at the entrance and the frog reading a book at the base of the right column.

Josep Batlló i Casanovas acquired an 1877 building and commissioned Gaudí to redo it from top to bottom. The result is unprecedented in the history of architecture: the façade is covered with trencadís -mosaic of broken ceramics- in shades of blue and green that change color depending on the incidence of light; the roof imitates the back of a dragon with glazed ceramic scales; the balconies are shaped like skulls or carnival masks depending on how you look at them; and the tower culminates in a four-armed cross oriented to the cardinal points. The guide explains the reading of the building as the setting for the legend of Sant Jordi: the dragon on the roof, the bones of the victims on the balconies, the spine of the dragon on the interior staircase.

The last residential building Gaudí built before devoting himself exclusively to the Sagrada Família. Pere Milà i Camps commissioned a house that would be at once a home, a monument and a declaration of principles. The result was a building without a single right angle: the undulating facade of Garraf stone mimics the strata of a mountain, the roof terraces – with their twisted chimneys that the students of ’68 christened “the warriors” – are a walkable sculptural space unique in the world. The guide reads the façade from across the street and explains the structural system-eliminated load-bearing walls, iron columns and beams-that allowed Gaudí to design completely free-standing floors, without load-bearing partitions, decades before Le Corbusier theorized it.

The small gardens in front of La Pedrera, at the intersection of Passeig de Gràcia and Diagonal, are the natural closing point of the itinerary. From here the guide directs the group on what to see in the surroundings: the interior of La Pedrera if you have bought a ticket, the Palau del Baró de Quadras by Puig i Cadafalch two blocks away, or Park Güell if it is late in the trip.