Barcelona sights: Eixample

Sagrada Familia ★★★ - The weirdest-looking cathedral in Europe rises like a giant, drippy sand castle from the precise grid of street in the Eixample neighborhood, an ongoing project representing Antoni Gaudí’s creativity at its whimsical, feverish best. The architectural details are almost Gothic in their intricacy, but with a modern, fluid twist. The rosy brown and gray stone is flecked with the colors of Gaudí’s signature tile-chip mosaics and crawls with funky gargoyles—which you can peep up close by climbing conch-shell spiral staircases (or taking elevators) up the towers... » more

Casa Batlló ★★★ - Gaudí's colorful Casa Batlló is the crowning jewel of the Modernisme movement, with curvaceous theater-mask balconies, soft-serve minaret chimneys, and an oil-slick rainbow of a roof shaped like a dragon's back. The amazing thing is that Gaudí designed every single architectrual element and decorative detail, down to the door handles and trash cans. Most just snap pics from the sidewalk, but it's worth taking the (admittedly pricey) hour-long self-guided audio tour inside.... » more

La Pedrera (Casa Milá) ★★ - Casa Milà—often called La Pedrera ("the quarry") for its undulating rocky shape, all poured cement set with chips of bone-white cermaic tile—is a magnificent apartment block designed by Antoni Gaudí and declared a UNESCO World heritage Site in 1984. Here, especially, Gaudí seemed to avoid straight lines at all costs—the whole place looks like it's melting. There's an exhibition space on Gaudí and Modernisme inside, and you can tour an apartment and the architectural fun park and swirly chimneys of the roof.... » more

Park Güell ★ - In the northern reaches of the Grácia district, north of the Eixample, rises one of architect Antoni Gaudí’s most colorful creations and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This idiosyncratic, 37-acre park was is filled with Gaudí’s colonnades of crooked columns, narrow gardens, small fountains, curvaceous benches, and whimsical animals... » more

Fundació Antoni Tàpies - The grand Barcelona painter and artist Antoni Tàpies i Puig (1923–2012) created this foundation—in an early Modernisme structure by Lluís Domènech i Montaner—to serve as a space for contemporary art exhibitons and lectures, and to preserve his own artistic legacy, housing more than 2,000 of his works... » more