What's Inside Casa Batllo | Art, Architecture, Design

Before you enter the Batlló family’s private residence, you will find a communal entrance hall on the ground floor. After viewing the sea and marine life motifs, as you enter the entrance hall, which is the first stop in the house, you will find yourself transported to an underwater environment. Here, you will find skylights that resemble turtle shells, vaulted walls with curved shapes, and a wooden staircase. The carved banister of the staircase is made from hardwood and looks like the backbone of an animal.

The noble floor is where Josep Batllo stayed until he passed away. It is the main floor of the building with an area of over 700 square meters. The noble floor has a private landing, a dining hall, and a private space for couples. It also has a study, which is the first room one would reach on this floor. Here, you will find a unique mushroom-shaped fireplace. From here, you will be led to the living room of the house, and a large picture window will take you to the gallery onto Paseo de Gracia. In 2002, this part of Casa Batllo was opened as a museum for public entry.

For Gaudi, the Mediterranean light was the perfect light. All throughout the house, from the noble floor to the attic, you will find natural light entering proportionally. The double patios are extremely crucial to this. The patios have walls that are coated with pieces of ceramics and glass in different hues of blue, with the darkest shade on top and lightest on the bottom. This, along with the windows of different sizes, ensures that light enters evenly. When you stand at the bottom of the yard, you will see a blue tone that makes you feel like you are standing underwater. In the center of the patio of lights, you will find a wooden lift car that is still in use today.

The Batlló family’s private dining room, located in the center of the Noble Floor, leads to an exclusive rear courtyard. Gaudi renovated the rear facade to add wavy balconies and iron railings. This garden, designed exclusively for the use of the Batllo family, was a place to relax, especially during the afternoon hours. You will once again find Gaudi’s techniques of trencadis at play here. You will flower pots and flower beds covered in mosaic tiles. You will also find a curved wall at the back with inlaid vases, which is designed to look like a hanging garden.

Built around the Patio of Lights, this part of the house was once upon a time used by servants for services such as laundry. The characteristic feature of the loft is its Mediterranean influence. The use of white is quite unique in this part of the building. This space is one of the best examples of how design and functionality come together. The loft also consists of a series of 60 arches that are placed in relation to each other in such a way that it resembles the rib cage of an animal.

Casa Batllo is known to be distinctive and eccentric. But, the roof is where Gaudi takes the building completely out of the realm of standard architecture. The dragon back design of the roof is a thing of beauty. This structure works in collaboration with the ribcage structure of the loft to give the complete skeletal form of an animal. The exterior look of the animal has been rendered by using colored ceramic tiles as scales. The plan here by Gaudi was quite detailed and he lent a sheen to the tiles so as to resemble that of a real animal.

The external facade of the house follows the same principle of asymmetry that can be observed throughout the house. The facade, hence, works as a prelude to what one can find inside the house. The lower ground floor, the main floor, and the galleries of the first floor, made of Montjuic sandstone, feature wavy lines. On the ground floor, Noble Hall, and the first floor, you will find slender stone columns that resemble the shape of bones. The midsection is multicolored and features hanging balconies. The balcony railings, made from cast iron that is attached to two anchor points, look like masks. On the Noble Floor, you will see a huge gallery that protrudes over Paseo de Gracia and large oval-shaped feature windows.

Trencadis is the name of the technique that Gaudi used to create tiled mosaics, likes of which can also be found at Park Guell. The color of the mosaic varies, with blue and green, drawing inspiration from the sea, taking prominence. Between balconies and window frames you will find patterns that evoke the image of a foamy sea. The house is then topped by a roof where the mosaic looks like fish scales, with hues of pink and teal. On the inside of the roof, you will find warmer tones of white, yellow, orange, and red. The green and blue tiles return at the closing of the roof, this time, evoking the image of the back of a dragon. A cross with four arms pointing north, south, east, and west also rises from the roof’s tower.

It is only natural that over the years people have tried to interpret the various images that the facade features mean. The cross is believed to represent the cross used by Saint George, the patron saint of Catalonia, to kill a dragon to save people from the animal. The bone-shaped columns, hence, are believed to commemorate its victims. This interpretation is probably how Casa Batlló came to be known as the house of bones or the house of the dragon. Other interpretations see the facade as an aquatic landscape that symbolizes Monet’s ‘The Water Lilies’, as a result of the colorful coating of ceramic glaze and fragments of broken glass.