The Dragon House

The facade of Casa Batlló built by Gaudí in 1906 seems to represent an immense living dragon. The roof evokes colored scales while a tower topped with a cross recalls Saint George's lance, patron of Catalonia. The building then transforms a simple urban apartment building into a monumental mythological creature.

Between 1904 and 1906, Antoni Gaudí refounded Casa Batlló in Barcelona, mixing architecture and symbolism as always. The facade undulates to the point of appearing organic, the balconies evoke masks or bones and the columns animal forms, but it's the roof that made the building famous: its iridescent tiles draw the scales of a dragon stretched out on the house.

The reading becomes precise with the turret topped with a cross, interpreted as Saint George's lance planted in the beast's spine. Now Sant Jordi slaying the dragon is a central figure of Catalan identity: Gaudí thus makes a religious legend into habitable architecture, where one literally lives inside the myth.

Inside, the same indecision reigns between building, sculpture and living organism, with subdued light, curved lines and surfaces with marine reflections that give the sensation of an almost liquid space. Casa Batlló remains one of the most accomplished examples of this symbolic and biomorphic architecture of the early 20th century.