Visits to Casa Vicens are back with half price tickets! Discover everything about Casa Vicens, the first Gaudí house:
Casa Vicens, the first home designed by Gaudí
The building is the first home designed by the great Modernist architect Antoni Gaudí. The house was finished in 1885 and has always been a family home or summer house. It was commissioned for a local merchant Manel Vicens i Montaner. After he passed away, his widow sold it to the Jover family in 1899 and they resided in it, handing it down the family through the years.
In 2014 Casa Vicens was bought by MoraBanc & Amura Capital investing €4 million to bring the building back to its former glory. The restoration process began in 2015 and fully conserves all the original features and rooms. The figure for the actual purchase of the building is undisclosed.
Discover Casa Vicens
The new museum will pay homage to the famed architect and visitors will also learn more about Gaudí’s background; his life before designing Casa Vicens, his intellectual influences and his inspiration both during and after his studies.
The ceramic glaze brickwork on the exterior is influenced by Arabic and Medieval styles, also incorporating Gaudí’s personal decorative and symbolic themes. These were only discovered after removing a layer of white paint used to cover some of the original decoration and papiermache artwork.
The house retains a gallery, dining room and a smoking room which adjoin the gardens and newly installed side entrance all on the ground floor. The main façade features the reconstruction of the original fountain with its circular base for collecting the water, a main body and metal structure. As a result of various works over the years, the whole piece had disappeared, so the reconstruction of the fountain is based on photographs.
The first floor of Casa Vicens is home to a permanent collection of Gaudí’s papers where visitors can discover several original pieces of his thoughts on architecture. Anyone who knows Gaudí’s work will be aware that he rarely wrote about his opinions on architecture and design, so these are special treats for enthusiasts indeed.
There is also a live audiovisual projection about the architect, and depending on what time of year, there will be temporary exhibtions and other activities dedicated to different parts of Gaudí’s life and work. Apart from Gaudí’s social, cultural and artistic context, visitors will be able to find out more about his projects prior to building this house – such as school projects, his city projects, religious projects and his first building and furniture designs.
Casa Vicens is a Unesco World Heritage Site, named among other works he designed such as the Sagrada Familia, Casa Batlló, La Pedrera, Park Güell, Palau Güell, Palau de la Música and Hospital de Sant Pau. It is located in the western part Gràcia and it is expected that approximately 150,000 people will visit the museum every year.
Here you can find all the information to get the tickets and prepear your visit: https://casavicens.org/
In fact, we have a wide selection of rental apartments located very close by, Check them out here