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Park Guell Review

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Park Güell

Address: Carrer d'Olot s/n; take Metro to Lesseps; then walk 10 min uphill or catch Bus 24 to park entrance, Gràcia, Barcelona, Catalonia, 08012

Category: Parks
Location: Upper Barcelona

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Fodor's Review:

Güell Park is one of Gaudí's, and Barcelona's, most pleasant and visually stimulating places to spend a few hours; it's light and playful, alternately shady, green, floral, and sunny. Named for and commissioned by Gaudí's main patron, Count Eusebio Güell, the park was intended as a hillside garden suburb on the English model. Barcelona's bourgeoisie seemed happier living closer to "town," however, so only two of the houses were ever built and the Güell family eventually turned the land over to the city as a public park. Gaudí highlights here include an Art Nouveau extravaganza with gingerbread gatehouses topped with a hallucinogenic red-and-white fly ammanite wild mushroom (rumored to have been a Gaudí favorite) on the right and a phallus impudicus mushroom (no translation necessary) on the left. The gatehouse on the right holds the Center for the Interpretation and Welcome to Park Güell, with plans, scale models, photos, and suggested routes analyzing the park in detail. Other highlights include the Gaudí Casa-Museu (the house where Gaudí lived with his niece for 20 years), the Room of a Hundred Columns—a covered market supported by tilted Doric-style columns and mosaic-encrusted buttresses, and guarded by a patchwork lizard—and the fabulous serpentine, polychrome bench that snakes along the main square.

Open: Oct.-Mar., daily 10-6; Apr.-June, daily 10-7; July-Sept., daily 10-9
Metro: Lesseps

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