Marrakech

The Audience Pavilion at the Badi Palace.

Before traveling to Barcelona last month, I stopped in Marrakech, Morocco for a few days to explore a city which I expected would be completely unlike everywhere I had ever been before. Despite being 1,200 years younger than Barcelona (which shows little sign of its age), I expected Marrakech would feel old, almost like a place you would find in some fairy tale, complete with old ruins, sketchy back alleys, snake charmers and the like. And I was pretty much right. The place feels ancient, like it's stuck in time somehow and that is both wonderful and a little scary. The difference between Barcelona, founded around 218 B.C. by the Romans, and Marrakech, founded 12 centuries later, was striking.

Walking around Barcelona is just like walking around any city in the United States or western Europe. Barcelona's streets are paved and generally organized on a grid (well other than in the old Barri Gotic); there are plentiful ATMs; and stores like Hermes and Louis Vuitton occupy storefronts in ten to 12 story buildings. The primary methods of getting anywhere are by car or bus, on the underground Metro train system or by walking.

Marrakech, on the other hand and as I expected, does not look like any city I have ever been to, with the possible exception of Tijuana, Mexico. But then even not. The streets are not gridded or even paved in some spots, ATMs are difficult to find and the stores seemingly have no names whatsoever. The primary methods of getting around the city are by scooter or motorcycle, on a donkey (or a cart pulled by one) or by walking. Walking, it seems, always works. Now admittedly, I spent most all of my three days in Marrakech inside the medina, or old city, but I spent enough time outside the walls of the medina to get a good idea that things work pretty much the same outside the medina wall as they do inside the wall. Although there may be fewer donkeys.

In a city that feels as old as Marrakech, I naturally wanted to seek out some sites where I could understand the history of the place. And while I wouldn't say it's easy to find anything in Marrakech because it proved very easy to get lost there, understanding Marrakech through its historical sites is a relatively simple exercise if you possess a good sense of direction and a really detailed map or if you are willing to trust (and pay) the locals with pointing you in the right direction. Be careful when operating on foot off a hotel-provided map and watch where other tourists are walking from (trust me, they are generally very easy to spot) when trying to find out of the way places. Keep plenty of dirhams handy if you plan on getting lost, especially if you plan on asking for directions.

Big picture-wise, the history of Marrakech can be broken down into two periods: the Berber dynasties and the Sharifian or arab dynasties. There were some years under the (likely involuntary) protection of France in the 20th century but the Berbers and the Sharifians pretty much controlled the city for its entire history. Now that's not to say that there were just one group of Berbers and one group of arabs holding the city for 1,000 years; there weren't. The actual history was way more complex. But despite the shifting tides of rule throughout its history and the city falling in and out of favor of whomever was in charge of the country, there is enough preserved through the years in Marrakech to stitch a pretty good idea of the history of the place together by visiting sites in one or two days.

The origin of Marrakech can be traced back to the Almoravids in the second half of the eleventh century. The exact date of the founding is either lost or in debate but it seems the 50 year period between 1050 and 1100 is the right ballpark with 1071 being the most agreed upon year. The Almoravids were Berbers, the indigenous peoples from the area currently defined as Morocco, and their rule over the city constituted the first of the Berber dynasties. They managed to develop and hold on to Marrakech for only 70 or so years before surrendering the city to the Almohads in 1147 who in turn surrendered it to the Merenids in 1269. Both the Almohads and Merenids were also Berbers. Got all that? Good! It won't be important for the rest of this blog post.

The medina wall and the Bab er Raha gate.

Most of the historical sites in Marrakech are set aside and preserved. But the earliest Berber sites, meaning the souks and the main square in the medina, Jemma El Fna, are as alive today as they were when they were founded almost 1,000 years ago. What is being sold in the souks (I'm thinking the orange-ish Reggie Miller Indiana Pacers number 31 jersey among other things here) may have changed a lot over the centuries and the people buying may be way different, but the basic trade which takes place in the various stalls is essentially the same. I'll bet the spices and olives sold hundreds of years ago aren't much different than those same goods being sold today.

The souks and Jemma El Fna have survived very much intact from the times of the Berber Dynasties but they are not the only things which still stand from the rule of Marrakech's founders. The Berbers were the first people to build Mosques in Marrakech mere decades after the founding of the city itself. Looking out across the city today, one can see mosques dotting the horizon near and far and during the five times daily azhan (or call to prayer) and the overlapping call from the various muezzins makes it obvious that mosques in the city are plentiful.

The Koutoubia Mosque.

The two oldest mosques in Marrakech, the Koutoubia Mosque and the Ben Youssef Mosque, were both built during the 1100s and have remained functional and in place through to today. I did not have time to visit the Ben Youssef Mosque while in town (generally speaking I needed a day or two more in Marrakech) but I did manage to stroll around the Koutoubia Mosque which is right off Jemma El Fna just to the south and west by about a quarter of a mile. Despite the distance, it is the most prominent building in the city when standing in the square. Its minaret is by far the tallest structure visible from the square and it projects a presence on the place despite the distance.

The mosque is not accessible to non-muslims so I had to content myself with walking around the building and admiring the place from the outside. There is a garden to the south and west which provides some shade and some great vantage points to view the minaret. The current mosque, built from 1147 to 1158 is actually not the original Koutoubia Mosque. The original structure was halted halfway through construction when it was determined that the orientation of the building was not quite precise enough relative to Mecca. How they figured this out in the twelfth century with Mecca located 4,000 miles away is beyond me. Nonetheless, construction was halted and the whole place was started anew.

The Koutoubia minaret is a thing to behold. There is about every type of motif and device ever used in Islamic architecture scattered up throughout its height. It is remarkably well preserved and does not at all look like it is 850 years old. I guess the desert climate has something to do with that. Visiting the outside of the mosque is a great activity to do just before dusk. It's not too hot at that time and there are plenty of people around. Crossing the street can be an adventure. Most people just sort of walk out into traffic whether or not there are cars and scooters coming (and there are ALWAYS scooters coming). We opted to follow the locals, hoping if something bad happened at least they'd get it first.

The other remnant of the Berber Dynasties is all around the medina. The medina wall was built between 1126 and 1127, about 50 years after the founding of the city and today the wall is completely intact. The wall is about 20 feet high and stretches just over 11 miles around the center of the city. The wall has a series of gates (called Babs) which allow pedestrian and vehicular traffic to enter the medina. The walls of course are largely vestigial now; they haven't had to keep invaders out for centuries. But it's cool that they are still there and complete as they were during the time of the Berbers. It's not difficult to imagine a traveler in the 13th century approaching the city walls in search of trade or shelter. Today, the only thing the walls shelter is thousands of swallows. The walls are perforated with the nests of these birds.

The Berber Dynasties left sites behind that define the fabric of Marrakech. They surround the medina and form and support the basis of trade and worship in the city. They are more responsible for the way Marrakech operates today despite not having held the city for almost 500 years. The historical sites from the Sharifian Dynasties are far more local but no less interesting and one of my favorite sites we visited in Marrakech was built during the first Sharifian Dynasty of the Saadians. It is perhaps appropriate, however, that the historical sites within Marrakech after the Berbers were defeated tell a disjointed story, reflecting the ambivalent attitude of the Sharifians towards the city. Some rulers clearly made Marrakech a priority; others clearly plundered it to take its riches elsewhere.

The Badi Palace, seen from the second floor terrace.

In 1525, the Saadians conquered Marrakech. The Saadians were the first of the Sharifian dynasties to control Marrakech, arab peoples who had moved into the Marrakech area from the east and who claimed to be descended directly from the prophet Mohammed himself. The Saadians made Marrakech the capital of their empire after they conquered the city of Fes about 300 miles to the northeast in 1549. In 1669 the Saadian rule in Marrakech was ended by the Alouites (also arabs). The current king of Morocco is descended from the Alouites who conquered the city in that year. While the Berbers and the Saadians pretty much maintained Marrakech as the most important city in their empire, the Alouites were less consistent in their treatment of the city. For a few hundred years of rule by the Alouites, the cities of Meknes and Fes were treated as far more important than Marrakech. This story can be seen in historical sites still remaining in the city today.

The most important Saadian ruler (in terms of Marrakech's built history) was sultan Ahmad al-Mansur. Upon his ascension to the throne, al-Mansur commissioned a lavish palace in the medina of Marrakech called the Badi Palace and when he left this world, he made sure he was well remembered with the construction of a series of tombs holding family members and servants just to the west of the palace he built for himself. The tombs, now known as the Saadian Tombs, and the palace are both preserved and accessible today and are worth the hour or two visit to understand a little bit about the history of Marrakech.

The Badi Palace Audience Pavilion looking north. Look closely and you can see a stork's nest through the arch.

The Badi Palace was my favorite site to visit in Marrakech. The palace is mostly a ruin now, the victim of one of the later Sharifian kings who needed the luxurious materials for palace construction at Meknes, but the original perimeter wall is intact and you can get a good sense of the scale and importance of what the place must have been like in the late 16th century. The palace is organized around a central court with multiple water pools and two opposing structures facing each other across the central pool. The Crystal Pavilion at the east end of the pool is long since gone; the Audience Pavilion at the opposite west end, where the sultan received visitors, is still largely intact.

There are a series of buildings along the north and south walls of the courtyard that served the main function of the palace. Today, these buildings are ruins or serve as museum spaces. The structure at the northeast corner of the palace has an accessible second level from which you can understand the general organization of the palace pretty well. The second level outdoor spaces also allow excellent views of the many many storks which have built nests on the palace wall and on roofs of the surrounding buildings.

The place is literally a ruin, but an intact one, so don't expect to see a lot of decorative tile work or ornamentation that you might expect when visiting an Islamic palace. All the good stuff was shipped off to decorate the palace at Meknes towards the end of the 17th century. It's also quite difficult to understand the function of a lot of the spaces in the palace because there is not a lot of interpretive signage (although there was way more here than at other sites). Off in a room on the south side of the property is the original minbar, or imam's pulpit, from the Koutoubia Mosque. While not that impressive in and of itself, the minbar does provide a glimpse into the quality of muslim craftsmanship in the 1100s. Admission to the minbar will cost you an additional 10 dirhams over and above the 10 dirhams required to get into the palace, but since 10 dirhams is about $1.25, it was worth the extra money to see everything here.

The courtyard of the Saadian Tombs.

If al-Mansur knew his palace was in ruins today, I expect he might be upset at what his successors did to the property he'd spent so much time developing. His tomb, however, is an entirely different story. This place is still largely intact, including all the decorative stonework and tile work, because one of al-Mansur's successor sultans didn't want anyone to remember al-Mansur and so he blocked up any access to the tombs in later years. Eventually the place was forgotten entirely. So what remains today is a fairly complete picture of what the place must have looked like shortly after it was completed. The tombs sit in a courtyard space with three main rooms which hold members of al-Mansur's family. The spaces in between the rooms contain tombs of servants beneath now centuries old tile work.

The Saadian Tombs are not exactly easy to find. We managed to make it to the Moulay al Yazid Mosque, which is literally right next to the tombs, before getting totally stumped. Only when someone much more astute than me noticed some white people coming out of an alley did we figure the tombs might be nearby. It was either that or they were doing something illicit. Fortunately for us we saw the ticket booth when we turned the corner and were able to visit al-Mansur's legacy.

The interior of the Saadian Tombs.

The tombs are accessed via a passageway just a few feet wide which takes three or four alternating turns before finally leading you out into the courtyard. Just where al-Mansur himself is buried is impossible to tell without some other sort of knowledge because there is absolutely no signage whatsoever inside the property; I wonder if they do this to keep the local official and unofficial guide business intact. The courtyard is not small so it is honestly difficult for me to see how it was lost for centuries but indeed that appears to be the case. The tombs were only discovered in aerial reconnaissance photographs in 1917. I guess we have a jealous sultan to thank for the preservation of the site. He ensured that al-Mansur's legacy would be remembered forever, even though his intent was the exact opposite. Visiting the tombs today won't take long but it's worth the standard 10 dirham entrance price.

Between 1603, when sultan Ahmad al-Mansur died, to today Marrakech spent about 99 years as the capital city of whatever dynasty ruled Morocco. That's not very long considering the 411 years in that span. So it should come as no surprise that there are few historically significant sites in the city after the Saadians lost control of the city in 1669. But there is one, the Bahia Palace (yes, there is a Badi Palace and a Bahia Palace in Marrakech like three blocks from each other), and it's just east of the two al-Mansur contributions to the city's history.

The Bahia Palace was built by King Mohammed IV in the 1860s for a grand vizier (advisor), and former slave (not sure how that worked exactly) to the king. I know this already sounds very sketchy but it's basically another property in the south part of the medina that costs 10 dirhams to enter so you can understand a little more about Marrakech's history. I honestly got very little out of my trip to the Bahia Palace, primarily because there is absolutely no signage to describe the property whosoever. The Badi Palace had enough to get a rudimentary understanding of what happened there and the Saadian Tombs were pretty much easy to figure out (a bunch of dead people were buried there) but a little description would have really helped at the Bahia Palace.

The Bahia Palace. Wishing I hired a guide like the one in this picture.

Don't get me wrong, the place is interesting and totally worth a buck twenty-five but I could have used a little context. The descriptions I read before visiting indicated there was a harem room which I was looking forward to seeing in a very uncharacteristically me way. I could have walked right through it and would never have known. In fact, I probably did and still don't know.

I wrote earlier in this post that I would have liked another day or two in Marrakech and I totally believe that. I missed three significant historical sites in the city in the Menara Gardens, the tanneries and the Ben Youssef Mosque and I regret traveling all the way to Morocco and missing these places. Part of that was my own choice. After touring the Saadian Tombs, the Badi Palace and the Bahia Palace in the morning and early afternoon of our last day in town, we opted to head beyond the medina wall to the Jardin Majorelle, a property formerly owned by Yves Saint Laurent northwest of the medina. In addition to being very picturesque, the gardens feature a Berber museum that describes the customs, lifestyle and artifacts of the Berber culture (the dental tongs were especially chilling). I thought that would tie well to the Berber parts of the city's history which it did.

Before traveling to Marrakech, I debated a few other cities in Morocco. My initial plan was to spend a day in Tangier but after reading about the place I decided it would be too much like a Mexican border town. From there my attention turned to Casablanca and Fes (Rabat was never really an option) but it seemed to me like Marrakech offered a unique balance between authenticity and history. Ultimately based on talking to people I met in Marrakech (maybe biased I know), I think I was right. I think I know a lot more about a part of the world that I knew little about and I'm convinced immersing myself in the history of Marrakech was the right thing to do.

The Berber Museum at the Jardin Majorelle. Take a taxi here please. If looks easy to find on a map; it's not.

46

Today is my 46th birthday. I'm still excited and still grateful to have made it this far. In addition to celebrating another year of life despite the sometimes questionable decisions I make (this bad habit is admittedly getting better each year I live), my 46th birthday means it's the start of year two of my five year quest to see more of this planet we live on. I feel even more fortunate now than I did a year ago.

Today I am declaring year one of my project a success, with an acknowledgement that there is a long way to go. In the past year, I have broadened my horizons by traveling to five new countries (Germany, Austria, Iceland, Spain and Morocco, in that order) and have added Africa to my continent collection. I've also revisited two of my favorite destinations in the United States in Las Vegas and Kentucky. Of all my specific goals I committed to in my first post in this blog, I have been to one of the promised two new continents, haven't seen Alaska or Hawaii but have made it to Barcelona. Not bad for twelve months. There are 48 more to go, God willing.

I don't think I'm traveling just to be there; I think I'm making the most of my experiences. I've had pretzels and beer in Bavaria; climbed the Alps (admittedly with help from a number of buses); been treated like a V.I.P. at the Maker's Mark distillery; walked on a glacier; sat in geothermally heated hot baths while snow fell on my head; learned about the Yule Lads in Iceland and Francisco Goya in Spain; seen a flamenco performance and drank where Hemingway drank in Madrid; eaten street food and watched snake charmers in Marrakech; and visited the works of one of the world's Art Nouveau masters in Barcelona. I've also seen a glimmer of the darker side of humanity through my visit to Dachau's disgusting concentration camp and a bullfight where four animals were tormented and ultimately killed. Leaving the safety of home is not always happy, but I've really been OK all the way.

Iceland's Blue Lagoon: sitting in 100 degree water with snow falling around you.

I haven't made any of my trips in the last year alone, which makes me very lucky to have such great friends who will suffer through my sometimes overly planned journeys with schedules and terms like "float." I've been thrown off now and then but I've never let the journey detract from drinking in the entire experience. I may have had to sit around for a few hours in Louisville waiting for some friends to wake up from a mint julep inspired mini bender the previous night but I know I wouldn't have stayed in a wigwam hotel or fake ran from fake dinosaurs or wondered what on earth a cup of chunky was without spending a long weekend with those same people.

I also think my idea of writing down what I have seen on each of these trips is serving me well. My memory is honestly just not as good as I would like to think it is. I can't remember all of the beer varieties I drank at Andechs Abbey or all of the details of my quest to see the Northern Lights. This blog allows me to revisit my experiences of the past year whenever I want to. I assume it will continue to jog my memory as my life goes on.

So now it's on to year two. This year seems to be shaping up as a year where I fill in some gaps in my past and venture into new parts of the United States, rather than breaking down new barriers abroad. I'm not sure I'm making more than one trip to Europe (although I'm pretty darned sure I'm going there at least once) and I may not hit a new continent this year. And all of that is OK. I still think my 47th year on this planet will be exciting and eye opening and that's really all I'm looking for. Onward!

Cerveceria Alemana in Madrid, an old haunt of Ernest Hemingway's.

Barcino

Living in the United States, it's often difficult for me to conceive of cities existing and being inhabited for millennia. The oldest continuously occupied settlement in the United States is generally acknowledged to be either Taos or Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico, depending on what source you read and whom you choose to believe. But since most of us don't spend a whole lot of time hanging out in Pueblos in the American southwest (although I have visited both), our historical context for the places we live and work is generally one to five hundred years old. I am a little shamed by my lack of historical awareness; after all I spent the first 11 years of my life in England surrounded by towns and cities far older than the oldest white settlements in this country.

Compared to Barcelona, most of England and all of the United States, including Taos and Acoma Pueblos, are babies. 1,000 years or 1,500 years of history is nothing to Barcelona which was founded in the third century B.C. by the Roman Empire, although none but the very prescient likely referred to the founding year of the city in quite that way. Barcelona (or Barcino as it was known Roman times) remained under Roman control from its founding in about 218 B.C. until sometime around the year 415 when the Visigoths occupied the city, ultimately forcing a partnership between the Visigoths and Rome for control of the city resulting in, among other things, the marriage of the daughter of Emperor Theodosius I to the Visigoth chief Ataulf.

Walking around Barcelona today, especially north of the Gran Via where our hotel on Carrer de Mallorca happened to be, it's difficult to see the city as existing 2,200 plus years ago. The city looks just as modern as somewhere like New York; there are boutique shops seemingly everywhere and the fabric of the city looks like somewhere planned well into the late 1700s or later. So when I read in my Lonely Planet guidebook that there were sections of the old Roman wall constructed in the fourth century still intact around the Barri Gotic, I knew I had to see some piece of that old wall for myself.

Roman wall and defense towers, Carrer Sots Tinent Navarro.

So after a day and a half of racing around to see the works of famed Art Nouveau architect Antoni Gaudí and a quick siesta after a lunch of chorizo sandwich and a typically bland Spanish beer, it was off to find a piece of the wall. I targeted the west side of the old city because there appeared to be three sections of the wall pretty close to each other. I figured these things would be difficult to find and if I missed one or two, maybe I'd get lucky and see the third.

As it turned out, finding the first piece of the wall we targeted was very easy. While it was down a pretty deserted single lane alley (for lack of a better term), the presence of a wall 16 centuries old seemed to be pretty obvious. But even better than finding the first piece of wall, there was interpretive signage next to it describing the history of the particular section and a map (below) showing all the other pieces. Turns out the Roman ruins are a legitimate tourist attraction. What started as a check the box, one off exercise suddenly became an afternoon treasure hunt. After all there were only eight pieces of the wall in a fairly compact section of the city. Surely it wouldn't take too much time to see them all. Having nothing to do until dinner, we set off.

The first part of the wall we visited was section number 6 on the map above. That piece of the wall was a section featuring some of the original defense towers constructed to keep the barbarians trying to sack the city at that time away from the inhabitants within the wall (ultimately of course this didn't work). Other sections of the wall are substantially similar. There is a corner piece of wall that shows a circular defense turret and a portion of the main city gate and aqueduct that brought water into the city from the north. Not all that exciting in and of themselves other than their age.

What is fascinating about these relics is the way the wall exists today. In some cases, the wall is free standing, like some of the defense towers. In other locations, it is actually used as the lower section of exterior wall of some later building or an arch in the old wall makes up a window of a newer structure, so the wall becomes in a sense a palimpsest of sorts, having its own story to tell through its own incompleteness. And the people around these historic sections of antiquity seem unfazed or unaware, strolling by on the way to some other business or having coffee in some alley cafe shaded by a wall generations and generations old while some tourists from America gawk at the pretty much completely unattractive rubble walls.

Roman aqueduct and old city gate, Placa Nova.

Cafe shaded by a section of the old Roman wall (on the left),

The star of Roman Barcelona and of our own mini scavenger hunt, though, is deep inside the old city walls and it's much older than the wall itself. The main temple in old Barcino was dedicated to Caesar Augustus and was constructed in the first century B.C. It sat on the main square of the city on a ten foot high stone podium and was one of the most important and imposing buildings in the city at that time. The exact history of the temple since Roman times is not exactly known, although there are accounts which imply the temple was intact in as late as the eleventh century. At some point in time, likely during medieval times, much of the temple was demolished to make way for other buildings. But not the whole thing.

As buildings were constructed in the middle ages, it seems that demolition of whatever was in the way was conducted selectively. If it didn't need to go, I guess you just took down what you needed to build on your own plot and left the rest intact. The process of man re-shaping the city eventually eliminated all but three of the columns in the southeast corner (or rear) of the old temple. At some point the columns turned from trash to treasure. They were reunited with a fourth column that had been relocated to elsewhere in the city and preserved in the courtyard of a residential neighborhood. The space that holds the columns is now open daily to visitors. This is the real deal.

If the existence of pieces of the wall next to cafes and as parts of churches amused me, finding these four columns intact and preserved was absolutely astonishing. There's only so long I can stare at four columns and a piece of architrave in a confined space, so after reading about the temple and its history, I was on my way. I believe the Roman wall and temple are the most complete Roman buildings I have seen to date (pathetic I know) and I feel the couple of hours spent tracking down each of these pieces was well worth it. I feel I understand a little more about the city of Barcelona for my troubles.

The Temple of Augustus, or what's left of it anyway.

The search for Roman ruins had one other side benefit. Since I didn't really plan on seeing all of the pieces of wall and the temple, I didn't really map out my route that well. Indeed, I never even marked all the spots on the hotel-provided map I'd been using to get around the city. Instead, I found everything by taking a picture of the map on the interpretive signage and then walking down the unmarked streets on that map while looking at the image on my iPod. The resulting route was a little chaotic and definitely one of discovery.

On our way from the temple to wall piece number 3 (which makes up the first ten feet or so of the south wall of a much newer building), we stumbled upon Gaelic BCN, a tiny but cool looking bar in an alley (appropriately called Carrer del Paradis) advertising good tap beer and tapas. After completing the Roman ruins quest, we made a beeline for this place as the first stop for dinner. We needed some food but I was especially impressed by the place advertising beer. I hadn't seen that much in Spain so I hoped my hunch paid off.

It did. In the hour plus we spent here, in addition to some lively conversation with our Columbian bartender, I had some of the best beer in my time in Spain. Barcino Brewers and Barcelona Brewing Company are two Barcelona-based microbreweries brewing beer in the spirit of the American craft brew movement. While at Gaelic BCN, I sampled Barcino's Gotic Pale Ale and Barcelona's La Bella Lola and Cerdos Voladares, a blonde ale and IPA respectively. All were good but if I'm having only one again based on my first bottle, I'll go with the Gotic Pale Ale. I love the label too. 

I like how the unexpected turns on vacations often lead to some of the best experiences. I'm sure this place wouldn't have been the same if we'd planned to go rather than just happening by. It's now one of my best memories.

Barcino's Gotic Pale Ale (empty) and Barcelona Brewing's La Bella Lola (in the glass).

Gaudí

Casa Batllo at night. My first Gaudi building close up.

At about 7:30 pm on Friday, May 30, I finally made it to Barcelona to see some of the works of architect Antoni Gaudí for myself, the last major stop on my 20 year long, but admittedly very discontinuous, Art Nouveau tour of the world. About an hour later, I had already stumbled upon Casa Milà and Casa Batllo blocks from our hotel and the trip was already worth it. The next day and a half would be spent exploring Gaudí's masterworks in a pretty intense crash course in Catalan Art Nouveau with some stops for tapas of varying quality and Spanish beer of consistently low quality along the way.

My journey from Washington DC to Barcelona had already taken me through Madrid and Marrakech on five planes, a few trains and a couple or three cars over the previous week. The first day of travel on this vacation featured a full out sprint to the wrong gate at the Frankfurt airport followed by a slower run to the right gate and a very nice granting of a request by the Lufthansa desk personnel to the pilots to open up the plane to let us on. The last day traveling to Barcelona found me in the old, cramped Casablanca airport on a four hour layover biding time until they finally let us out of there. I was a little freaked out by the fat guy and his friends who downed a half bottle of duty free Scotch with lunch in the food court. It takes all sorts...

This trip to Barcelona for me was all about architecture. Back in the day (all of about a decade ago), I used to take at least one of these kinds of vacations per year, exhaustively combing through architecture reference books and old magazines from my bookshelves to assemble the most comprehensive building list possible in each place I planned to visit. Holidays at that time were full on architecture geek tours. I even used to produce bound volumes of research on buildings so I could study up before going and have a record of what I'd seen afterwards. These spiral bound books and thousands of slides are still in my condo, proof of my passion for those trips.

But over the years, my enthusiasm for architecture has waned as I have developed other obsessions and interests. I was pretty sure I wouldn't be falling on my knees like I did in Paris in front of August Perret's apartments on Rue Franklin or bouncing with joy like I did when I first saw Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Glasgow School of Art, but I was extremely excited nonetheless to see Gaudí's works. The late 19th and early 20th centuries represented a period of enormous change as architects abandoned traditional architecture based in classicism and adopted new materials and manufacturing processes and developed new ideas about how to form spaces to produce Modern architecture. It is the period of architectural history that I am most interested in and Art Nouveau played a key role in the evolution. Despite my loss of fervor for my profession, I remain passionate about that period of architectural history.

Before I really start writing about all the places I visited, let me say two things. First, the architecture tourist in Barcelona has it good. Gaudí produced three true modern masterworks (Casa Milà, Casa Batllo and the Expiatory Church of the Sagrada Familia) and they are all open to the public. His most important landscape work, Parc Güell, is also open to the public. That's pretty extraordinary.

Secondly, these places are packed with tourists. And I don't just mean architects. The city of Barcelona has done an amazing job of promoting these treasures and getting people to their city to visit them. I've been on countless modern architecture house tours all over the United States and Europe and I've never seen the number of people in a place like there were in Casa Batllo the Saturday I visited. And these places are expensive. It costs 21.50 Euro to get into Casa Batllo. That's almost $30! How cool is it that people are spending some serious money to visit modern architecture sites? Very cool is the answer.

The very long line to get in to Casa Mila.

My strategy for visiting Gaudí sites in Barcelona was to hit what I thought would be the most popular places early in the two days I was in town, meaning Parc Güell and the Sagrada Familia, and fill in the rest of one of the days with his private residences Casa Batllo and Casa Milà, which I figured would be less popular. I was right and wrong in this strategy. I bought timed admission tickets for Parc Güell and the Sagrada Familia in advance for the first time slot of the day. By the time I left the Sagrada Familia, the place was packed; I'm definitely glad I got in first. Not so much at Parc Güell. While the Parc was filling about an hour after I entered, I think I could have visited later and had a similar experience as I did at 8 am. Plus I guess I could have grabbed an extra hour of sleep.

In addition to Parc Güell being not so crowded early in the day, my thinking that the other two sites on my list would be less crowded was dead wrong. Both of these places were pretty full too. Casa Batllo was probably the more crowded of the two but the place was small enough that good pictures could be taken if you just waited a bit for people to get out of the way, and most visitors were courteous enough to wait while I snapped a pic or two. Casa Milà was less crowded except at the roof level, which is really the signature portion of that building. It was absolutely impossible to capture the roof terrace level without a pile of tourists in the way. If I had to do it all over again in two days, I'd definitely buy early morning tickets for Sagrada Familia but spend the second day first thing at Casa Milà. Live and learn.

All told, I managed to get to five Gaudí sites: the four mentioned above plus Palau Güell, a private residence for the family of Gaudí's most loyal client, Eusebi Güell, an industrialist who managed to profit greatly from a number of businesses established during the industrial revolution. Among his many business interests, he established the first Portland cement company in Barcelona. Hey, that's a big deal for me. The Palau Güell, designed and constructed from 1885 to 1890, was an early work of Gaudí's but the last of a half dozen or so building commissions he would receive from Güell. Gaudí graduated from architecture school in 1878 and his partnership with Güell started that same year. He sort of struck it rich with Güell right away.

The Palau Güell is located less than one block off Barcelona's famous La Rambla. Compared to Casa Milà and Casa Batllo, which are modernist compositions of rooms that rarely have a straight line in them, Palau Güell is decidedly un-Gaudí-like. The rooms in the Palau are all rectilinear and the prevailing mood is medieval and Gothic. Wooden coffered ceilings in several of the major spaces look like they are pulled out of old castles and the Gothic tracery in the windows in the front of the Palau facing Carrer Nou de la Rambla speak to one of Gaudí's original architectural inspirations. The use of materials is also clearly not consistent with later works. There is wood in the Palau just like there is in his later works but it's overly dark and the leather that shows up throughout the building will be gone from Gaudí's works 20 years later.

The dome of the Palau Guell.

More than anything else though. the Palau Güell is a useful study in what is to come later. The shutter mechanism custom designed by Gaudí for the Hall of Intimates foreshadows the mullion-less window and atrium ventilation systems at Casa Batllo. The use of leaded glass and wrought iron appears in spots. And the catenary curve, such a signature of Gaudí's work in a number of later buildings, makes an appearance in the main floor antechamber and visitors' hall but more prominently in the catenary hyperboloid dome over the chapel. The dome is broken on four sides, allowing light into the center of the house from above.

But the real treat is on the roof, where it's almost like Güell told Gaudí to just do whatever he wanted. As he did later in the Casa Milà and Casa Batllo, Gaudí made works of art out of every chimney on the building (and there are a lot of chimneys in this building), using the trencadís technique native to Catalonia, a process of decoration using a mosaic of broken tile shards. When we entered the Palau, we were informed that the terrace and roof were not accessible due to the rain falling when we purchased tickets. But the rain had abated when we reached the roof and thankfully, we were able to walk around up there. It would not have been the same without the roof access. If you go, make sure you make it to the roof. Wait for the rain to pass if that's the issue.

The roof of the Palau Guell.

The Palau Güell was the second Güell commission I visited on my trip. I spent the first couple of hours that same morning at the Parc Güell, a public park north of the city that started life as a luxury housing development, the brainchild of Eusebi Güell. The idea was to develop the site into sixty houses each on its own lot. The site was situated next to some  existing upper class housing developments and the view from the site and it's remoteness from Barcelona's factories at the end of the 19th century must have made the site seem like a no brainer for housing development. Ultimately, only two houses were ever built on the site and the park was eventually turned over to the city for use as a public space.

While Gaudí was awarded the commission some years before, the park was first developed in 1900 and the first Gaudí buildings, the two entrance pavilions, one intended for use as the property porter's house, were completed just before the end of 1902. The remaining Gaudí contributions to the park were completed before the end of the first decade of the 20th century, likely closer to 1907, and they stand today very much the same as they did then.

Parc Guell's porter's house.

The two entrance pavilions flank the main gate to the park. The gate and the south wall of the park are Gaudí designed and the wall features the words "Parc" and "Güell" numerous times on alternating medallions of trencadís tile work. Beyond the gate lies a series of steps leading up to a plaza supported by a field of columns also designed by Gaudí. The plaza was conceived as the main public space in the housing development and the main water tanks for the entire estate were located below the plaza so the space was both functional from a social and utilitarian perspective.

Halfway up the first flight of stairs is the famous dragon sculpture, again covered with trencadís just like the walls of the plaza above, with water spouting from his mouth. This sculpture, which is sold in miniature form in all sorts of souvenir stores all around Barcelona, has become an icon of Gaudí design and is worth a pic or two or at least a selfie. My early 8 am start time allowed me to get a good look at this sculpture without anybody else around; an hour later the steps were mobbed with a tour group and every last one of them it seemed had to get themselves a picture with the dragon.

All the Gaudí works at the park are in the Monumental Zone of the park, which requires a timed admission ticket. The park is a good walk from the Metro and it's all uphill. Be prepared for some walking and take the exterior escalators to save some steps. Barcelona is the only city I've been to that has exterior public up escalators next to sets of steps. You'll be glad when you get to them. The porter's house at the entrance of the park is open as a museum, with a series of exhibits about the park's construction, including a very informative time lapse projection show describing the history of the development.

After the first couple of hours at Parc Güell it was on to Gaudí's two most important residential commissions, Casa Batllo and Casa Milà (also known as La Pedrera), both designed and constructed in the first decade of the 20th century. Both were multi family dwellings. Casa Batllo featured the residence of the Batllo family on the main floor with a major outdoor space on a private terrace and a series of two per floor apartments above the main floor. The roof of the building was developed as a shared rooftop terrace. Casa Milà on the other hand was entirely an apartment building. Each floor of the building featured four luxury apartments with a shared light well between each pair of apartments. The roof terrace, just like at Casa Batllo, was developed as a shared amenity for the building. Casa Batllo was a renovation of an existing building; Casa Milà was a new building completely designed by Gaudí.

The front facade of Casa Batllo.

Casa Batllo (pronounced "buy-oh") is a classic modern residence museum. It allows you to tour through all the spaces in the Batllo family residence in addition to climbing the stairs of the building to the roof around the central split double lightwell which is the pivotal organizing element in the building's design. Along the way up to the roof, you pass the front doors of each of the former apartments and get to walk through the attic space, which is an important service space in the Casa Batllo constructed with catenary vaulting. The catenary vaulted attic space can also be seen in Casa Milà, where it becomes much more important. Casa Batllo as a museum is all about itself, which considering the subject matter is entirely appropriate.

Casa Batllo is a building constructed seemingly out of a madman's fantasy. There are no straight lines in the rooms of the building at all, either in plan or section. Each space in the building seems to have grown rather than been built but along the way it all seems to make some sort of perverse sense. The spacious lightwell, which is brilliantly designed by Gaudí with its own custom drainage and ventilation system, is the component which makes the whole design work. The lightwell is twice the size of the one in the original building before Gaudí started the renovation which allows natural light into the interior spaces of the building all the way on the ground floor.

The design of the building is definitely adventurous and I can imagine the Batllo family must have been extremely trusting in Gaudí to allow him free reign in the design. We do not get a really good sense of what it must have been like to live in the building because there are some pieces missing. The outdoor terrace structure, allegedly a catenary curve construct which shaded the Batllo family's private outdoor space, is gone. And unfortunately, all the rooms in the building are devoid of furniture. I am sure these two omissions have as much to do with the amount of people in the building as anything else. The visitation numbers would likely have to be cut in half if they had left these pieces in the building.

The grand front facade windows in Casa Batllo.

Despite what is not there, I did get a sense that Gaudí's design did work from a livability point of view. Allowing temperature and ventilation control from the lightwell via hand operated baffles between the well and the apartments must have been welcome at the beginning of the 20th century in what must have been cold and dirty winters when the only means of heat were burning fuel in your own residence. I also thought the system of mullion-less windows Gaudí designed in the undulating window wall at the front of the building were brilliant. I wish they had been open when I visited; I would have loved to see the entire front of the building opened up around the bone-like columns in the building's facade.

The roof terrace, just like at the Palau Güell was also a special experience. Similar to the Palau Güell, Gaudí groups the chimneys in the building together to form rooftop sculptures complete with trencadís tilework. But the most wonderful feature of the roof terrace is the roof over the building's water tanks at the front of the building. It's almost as if there is a dragon sleeping on the front of the roof with shimmering orange, green and white tilework making up the scales and back ridge of the beast. It's at once an allusion to St. George, Barcelona's patron saint, as well as making the whole facade of the building feel alive, from the gaping maws of the skeletal window openings to the scaled body of a mythological creature on the roof.

The roof terrace of Casa Batllo with the lightwell in the foreground and the dragon's back roof behind.

Detail of the dragon's back roof with a four armed cross next to it.

Despite the missing furniture, Casa Batllo was my favorite Gaudí building that I visited in Barcelona. It seemed to me that the architect was allowed complete control of all design decisions at the height of his creative powers and that everything came together perfectly. It really was a masterwork developed with the full support and endorsement of his client. After finishing up at Casa Batllo, it was on to Casa Milà, a mere three blocks up the street.

If there was an immediate disappointment with Casa Milà, it was that the whole outside of the building was under some sort of reconstruction, was completely covered with a fine mesh with the facade of the building printed on it and was therefore not visible to us. The construction activity also affected the quality of light inside the building. It was therefore difficult to understand how full of light the place would be; it all seemed sort of dull inside. Oh well. These things happen I guess.

Casa Mila, covered with a construction tarp featuring a silk screened image of Casa Mila. Sneaky!

The portions of Casa Milà that are open to the public include (in this order) the ground floor of one of the main atria, the roof terrace, the attic of the building (which doubles as a museum) and two of the apartments on one floor, one of which is fairly intact, complete with furniture (much appreciated after the Casa Batllo experience) and the other of which is partially converted to the gift store. Every place has to have at least one store, right?

Overall the design of the Casa Milà proved to be more restrained than that of Casa Batllo, presumably because the client was interested in leasing apartments than getting a masterwork of one of the world's great Art Nouveau architects for their own residence. The rooms in this building do actually have some straight lines in plan and elevation and the detailing is much more conservative. There are sinuous curves in the doors and transoms and some nature like sculpting in the plaster ceilings but the spaces look less cave-like (for lack of a better word) than the rooms at Casa Batllo. I think it was interesting that the apartments, which are enormous - complete with maid's quarters, are presented with decidedly non-Art Nouveau furniture. I imagine that presentation was pretty close to reality.

The interior of the apartments at Casa Mila.

The roof of the Casa Milà is similar to the roofs at the Casa Batllo and Palau Güell, with grouped chimneys with mosaic trencadís. But unlike the other two properties, the ground plane of the Casa Milà undulates, adding a third dimension to the experience that combined with the chimneys opens up vistas and conceals monuments around the property as you move around the roof. The roof on a gorgeous spring day just after lunch was packed with visitors. It was difficult to get a good shot of the terrace without throngs of tourists.

The structure that allows the roof surface to undulate is a series of catenary vaulted arches in the attic space below, similar to the Casa Batllo but way more complicated. Instead of a single row of consistently shaped arches, the arches at Casa Milà grow and shrink to define the walking surface above. The attic space at Casa Milà doubles as a museum and contains a wealth of information about many of Gaudí's buildings. The museum shows videos, early studies and models of his designs, including images of the weighted models Gaudí created to study the use of catenary curves in building structure, and a before and after model of the Casa Batllo. The transformation is astonishing. I think I got just as much out of the attic space at Casa Milà as I did out of the rest of the visit.

The roofscape of Casa Mila. Above...

...and below. Showing the catenary curves made of Catalan tile.

At this point, day one of my Gaudí tour was in the books. One day, four Gaudí properties. This was a bit of a packed agenda but totally achievable in a single day. Start early. The only major work left to see was the Expiatory Church of the Sagrada Familia. Just like day one, day two featured an early start, a 9 am entry time into Gaudí's most significant and visible work. The early start was definitely worth it on day two.

Sagrada Familia, with cranes.

Construction on the Expiatory Church of the Sagrada Familia began in 1882. Its projected completion date, depending on which graphic you believe in the church itself, is somewhere between 2020 and 2030. Antoni Gaudí became involved with the project in 1883, when he was 31 years old; it consumed the rest of his life and ultimately has kept going far beyond his death 88 years ago. The fact that we are still building this church based on his models and studies is a testament to the lasting power of his genius. The church was finally consecrated in 2010 as a minor basilica, the same year the building was enclosed.

At the risk of repeating myself (even though that's exactly what I am doing), let me say again that I am stunned at the amount of visitors this place receives. I opted for the admission with tower visit (I picked the nativity towers since those were completed by Gaudí) but didn't get the audio guide. All that cost me the tidy sum of 19.30 Euros, which is a little more than $26. $26 to visit an unfinished church. I'm amazed non-architects pay that much in such quantities. Again, hats off to the Barcelona tourism folks and good for architecture! I visited two Gothic churches in the city in my couple of days in town. Both were constructed primarily in the 1300s and both are free. Enough ranting.

The Sagrada Familia is at its heart a Gothic church, because pretty much all churches in western civilization are based upon that sort of model. But when it's finally finished, this church is going to be super complicated. At the time of Gaudí's death, only four of the 12 facade towers were complete. These towers, on the nativity facade, can be seen in the photograph above. They are darker brown in color. At the present time, four similar towers have been completed on the passion facade, which is on the other side of the building from the nativity facade. The final four towers on the glory facade have yet to be completed. The glory facade towers are the most complicated and will, when complete, define the entrance to the church. The twelve towers in total represent the twelve apostles.

Those twelve towers, however, are the smallest of the towers on the church. The main tower over the crossing of the church is almost double the height of the facade towers. Around the main tower there are planned four additional intermediate towers which will be about 1.5 times the height of the facade towers. Based on the photo above, there is a lot of work to do. When the building is complete, the towers already completed, which look so huge today, will seem small when compared to the final product.

View of the nave of the Sagrada Familia.

Despite my ranting that I can't believe people pay a lot of money to visit this church, it is pretty amazing. It is really a modern version of a Gothic church. It's at once the same and completely different from those amazing buildings constructed all over Europe in the middle ages. The form is obviously pretty much identical and without looking closely at a photograph of the main nave of the church (like the one above), one might think it is a building straight out of the 1300s.

But start to look closer and you will start to see subtle differences that make all the difference. Gaudí's understanding of forces and structure was far more sophisticated than the master builders of six or seven hundred years ago. Columns in the old Gothic cathedrals, which are straight up and down although they have lateral forces to resist in addition to gravity loads, are canted in Gaudí's church. The Gothic builders accommodated the lateral forces with flying buttresses. The Sagrada Familia doesn't have any because it doesn't need them. 

The shape of the vaults is also purer in the Sagrada Familia. Gaudí's three dimensional force models informed his design of catenary vaults, structurally far more efficient than other forms used in Gothic cathedrals. A catenary is the natural form of a hanging cable; equally distributed loads on structure can be most efficiently resisted with a catenary curve.

Gaudí also takes advantage of concrete construction, a material poured into a negative form, to create a new vocabulary for individual structural components. Columns are no longer similarly shaped stones laid on top of one another. Instead, columns can twist to resemble plants and other natural forms. Vaults no longer need to be ribbed and laid by hand. Instead hyperbolic paraboloids can be used, taking advantage of less material to generate structurally more efficient vaults. The medieval builders didn't stand a chance.

The evolution of the church's design and the model based methodology used by Gaudí are on full display in the museum in the church's basement. You could honestly spend a day or more in this museum and learn more than you probably ever wanted to know about the building. The most informative part of the museum to me was seeing the way Gaudí's influence changed the original concept of the church from Gothic to something else so thoroughly and suddenly. There are three side by side large scale sectional models that illustrate this transformation pretty effectively.

The imagery in the stained glass and sculptures adorning the building is consistent with the church's antecedents  religious themed stories from the Bible abound. Gaudí does, however, wrap more natural motifs into the facade, introducing trees and birds which give a more Art Nouveau feel to the building. These are very well seen from the nativity facade towers, which I would recommend adding to the cost of your admission, even though when I visited the upper sections of the towers were closed.

View of the tree in the center of the nativity facade, from the facade's towers.

The stair of the nativity towers.

I'm glad I visited the Sagrada Familia as the last piece on my Gaudí pilgrimage. But perhaps more than the church itself, I was most excited about seeing the school house on the property. Also designed by Gaudí, the building consists of only three rooms but boasts an amazing hyperbolic paraboloid roof constructed of straight wooden beams with a layer of Catalan tiles for the roof structure. I've tried at least twice to use the roof of this building as a model for a canopy design in a school, once at my first job in upstate New York and once with my current employer years and years ago (I failed both times). It's rare that I get to see an actual building that directly inspired my design thought process on a project.

The school of the Sagrada Familia.

With my visit to the Sagrada Familia school, my Gaudí journey was almost complete. I definitely appreciate the contributions that Gaudí left to this world. It took me way too long to get here but at least I made it. There's one less bucket list architecture trip to undertake now. The final stop on my Gaudí journey was to the crypt of the Sagrada Familia. In the far side of the crypt nearly beneath the nativity facade towers is the grave of Antoni Gaudí. Definitely worth the last stop on the trip.

The final resting place of Antoni Gaudi.