Go into the crypt and look at the leaning brick columns, none of which is vertical

Work out why the columns lean: they follow the line of force, so nothing needs buttressing

Find the hanging chain model and work out how Gaudí designed a building upside down

Walk the colony around it — the houses, the school, the co-operative — built by Gaudí's collaborators

Work out what was never built here and how much of it went into the Sagrada Família instead

Eusebi Güell built a textile colony outside Barcelona with houses, a school, a co-operative and a cultural centre, and gave Gaudí the church. Gaudí did the site planning with Berenguer, Rubió and Canaleta, and designed the church himself — but only the crypt was ever built, because Güell died in 1918 and his sons dropped the project. That crypt is where Gaudí worked out the leaning columns, the branching structure and the hanging chain models that the Sagrada Família is built on. Everything he later did at scale was tested here first.

Colònia Güell: The Crypt That Became the Sagrada Família

Find the medieval wall and the two ruined towers that Gaudí built the house around

Work out what Gaudí thought was wrong with Gothic and how the building argues the point

Go up onto the roof terrace for the view over Barcelona

Find Domingo Sugrañes's tiled benches at the entrance and Joan Rubió's viaduct on the estate

Work out who Martin the Humane was and why the end of his line mattered to Catalonia

Martin the Humane, the last king of the house of Barcelona, had a residence on this hill under Collserola. By 1900 all that was left was some wall and two half-ruined towers — and Gaudí, commissioned to build the Casa Figueras here, incorporated them into the new house. Bellesguard belongs to his neo-Gothic period, and it is the clearest surviving statement of what he thought about Gothic: he had studied Catalan, Balearic, Roussillon, Leonese and Castilian Gothic closely and concluded it was an imperfect style, only half solved. This building is his attempt to finish the job.

Bellesguard: Gaudí on a Royal Ruin

See the Sagrada Família, begun in 1882 and taken over by Gaudí in 1883, whose central Tower of Jesus Christ reached structural completion on 20 February 2026 at 172.5m, the tallest church in the world

Walk the Hypostyle Room, with its 86 Doric columns, and the mosaic serpentine bench at Park Güell, built between 1900 and 1914 and opened as a public park in 1926

Climb to the roof of Casa Milà (La Pedrera) among the chimneys known as the 'garden of warriors', and see the attic's 270 parabolic vaults

Visit Casa Batlló, remodelled by Gaudí in 1904–1906

Gaudí was not a decorator, he was a structural engineer who thought in catenary curves — the shape a hanging chain makes, inverted, which carries load in pure compression and needs no buttressing. He worked out his forms with upside-down models made of string and weighted bags. That is why the Sagrada Família's columns lean and branch like trees and why the attic of La Pedrera is 270 parabolic arches. He took the Sagrada Família over in 1883 and was still on it when a tram killed him in 1926; the central tower only reached structural completion on 20 February 2026.

Barcelona's Gaudí: The Sagrada Família, Park Güell, La Pedrera and Casa Batlló

Walk between the pavilions above ground and then find the tunnels that connect them underneath

Work out the argument the building is making: that light, air and gardens are medical equipment

Find where Domènech's own work stops in 1913 and his son's more restrained version takes over from 1920

Look at the mosaic, stained glass and ceramic work and work out how much of it is inside patient wards

Work out why the full project was never finished, and which parts are missing

Lluís Domènech i Montaner's idea was that patients recover better among gardens and light than in a corridor, so he built a hospital as a set of separate pavilions in parkland, connected underground. Construction ran from 1902 to 1930: thirteen Modernista buildings by Domènech himself between 1902 and 1913, then six more from 1920 by his son Pere Domènech i Roura in a restrained version of the style. The full plan was never built. With the Institut Pere Mata in Reus, also his, it is one of the largest ensembles of Catalan Modernisme anywhere. UNESCO listed it in 1997.

Sant Pau: A Hospital Built as a Garden City

Go down into a cellar and work out how many storeys below the town you actually are

Find out what the traditional method is, and why the second fermentation happens in the bottle you buy

Learn the three grape varieties — Macabeo, Xarel·lo, Parellada — and taste a cava made only from them

See disgorging done, which is how the dead yeast comes out without losing the pressure

Taste across the ageing categories and work out what extra time on the lees actually does

Cava is made by the traditional method — second fermentation in the bottle it is sold in, exactly as in Champagne — from Macabeo, Xarel·lo and Parellada, and the great majority of it comes from the Penedès, with Sant Sadurní d'Anoia as its centre. The town is undermined by kilometres of cellars going several storeys down, because the wine needs constant cool temperature and darkness while it ages on its lees. The cellars are the real attraction: you go down in a small train and come back up into a normal Catalan town.

Sant Sadurní d'Anoia: Cava Under the Town

Go into the Cau Ferrat and work out that the wrought iron collection is the reason the house is called that

Find the two El Grecos Rusiñol paraded through the streets when he brought them here

Work out what the Festes Modernistes from 1892 were for and what came out of them

Go next door into the Maricel and out along the seafront the pair of them face

Come for Carnival in February, which is one of the biggest in Catalonia

Santiago Rusiñol bought two fishermen's cottages on the seafront at Sitges, knocked them together and made the Cau Ferrat — part studio, part museum of the wrought iron he collected, and the venue for the Festes Modernistes from 1892, where Catalan Modernisme was effectively launched as a movement. Two El Greco paintings hang in it, which he carried through the streets in procession. Next door is the Maricel, and the town behind is a compact white grid on a headland. Sitges also has one of the largest carnivals in Catalonia and is a long-established gay resort.

Sitges: The Town Modernisme Was Argued Out In

Put a hand near the Font del Lleó and work out how hot around 74°C actually feels coming out of the ground

Go into the Roman baths in the centre, part of which has survived continuously since antiquity

Find out that Pliny the Elder wrote about these baths as Aquae Calidae, and work out what two thousand years of continuous use means

Take a treatment at one of the working balnearis, which is the same reason the Romans stopped here

Work out why the water is that hot — how deep it has been and how fast it comes back up

Caldes de Montbui has been a spa town since it was Roman Aquae Calidae, and part of the Roman bath building in the middle of it is still standing. The water comes out of the ground at 74°C, which makes it one of the hottest springs in Europe. Pliny the Elder mentions the baths here, under the name Aquae Calidae, in his account of Roman Hispania — so the place has been written about as a spa for two thousand years and has never stopped being one.

Caldes de Montbui: The Hottest Spring in the Peninsula

Walk the cloister and work out that it is on the outside of the church, looking out over the plain

Climb the octagonal bell tower for the view over Lleida and the Segrià

Work out what the bare interior means: this was a barracks for more than a century after Philip V took it

Find the carved capitals that survived the conversion, and the ones that did not

Look down at the modern city and work out why the cathedral is up here and nothing else is

The old cathedral of Lleida stands on the hill above the city with a cloister on the outside of the church rather than tucked behind it — an open arcaded gallery with a view over the plain, which is unusual to the point of being unique. After the War of the Spanish Succession Philip V turned the whole complex into a military barracks, and it stayed one for well over a century, which is why the interior is bare. It was slowly recovered in the 20th century. The octagonal bell tower is one of the tallest Gothic bell towers in Catalonia.