One of the best places to see a lot of Gaudí’s work is at Park Güell. It was intended to be a housing community in which Gaudí actually designed a couple model homes. The community never took off, but Gaudí lived in one of the houses for many years himself. The park is full of his most famous technique, trencadis: using crushed pieces of ceramic to mosaic-tile a sculpture of another shape. This technique is everywhere in the park – on benches, walls, ceilings, windows. The forms are meant to echo nature, and everything is very colorful.

Park Güell is also quite crowded – as one of the Gaudí masterpieces, it’s one of the biggest tourist draws in the city. But to preserve the World Heritage site, they only let 400 people in at a time on a stamped ticket system. If you go, I recommend purchasing your ticket for a certain time on the web before you go. When I was there for my 2:30 tour, many people were waiting around to get into the next available timeslot at 5:30pm.

There is a free section of the park where you can go without a ticket, but the majority of the best views and the artwork is in the ticketed section.

Gaudí’s home in the park is now a museum to his life and works. The park is also up on a hilltop, so you can see wonderful views of Barcelona after you climb up there. It’s worth visiting, regardless of whether modernisme is your thing.

Title quote: Antoni Gaudí