Sideways at Park Güell

There are several ways to approach Park Güell in Barcelona, Spain. I took the road less traveled, because the tour bus I had hopped on didn’t actually stop up on the hill where a convenient main entrance is located. Instead, I was told I could walk up a rather steep, twisty incline in the Gracia district to get there. I did, iPod on “Shuffle” as I felt my quads tighten. What seemed like the main entrance turned out to be a side gate, but this just made my exploration of Antoni Gaudí’s public park all the more mysterious.

I was drawn to the piled viaducts, the promise of cacti, palm trees and odd shapes inside. My iPod was playing Brian Eno’s 1/1 from “Music For Airports,” and I decided there couldn’t be a better soundtrack for my exploration: an open piano motif of five notes is repeated, intersecting with synth lines at random angles, developing and enveloping the listener. The rocky clay of this hillside reminded me of the surface of Mars. It felt like visiting a new planet. In fact, I’d read somewhere that the set designers for the original Planet of the Apes movie had Gaudí’s morphing surfaces in mind when they constructed the apes’ village. Possibly they had visited Park Güell.

I climbed inside the viaducts, a system of passageways that seems formed out of the earth, magically generated somehow, almost infantile. Gaudí was enlisted to build this park by Count Eusebi Güell as part of a housing project planned for a steep hill called El Carmel; the project failed (not enough wealthy Spanish folk wanted to buy lots here) but the park became a public attraction; Gaudí purchased a house on the grounds himself and lived there with his family from 1906 on.

The viaducts are made up of piled rocks, resembling the leathery skin of an iguana or prehistoric reptile. The transplanted palm trees amid the desert scruff give this winding space an oasis feel; the spectacular view at the top of El Carmel overlooking Barcelona reminds you of California’s peaks. Eno’s searching music led me on my way.

Park Güell follows no logical layout. Perhaps Gaudí had this in mind. You just wander around, up and down, crossways and back, through intricate pathways, some covered in piled rock or lattices of green, others opening out to unusual vistas that you’ve just traveled across. At least that was my experience, entering through the right side of the park. Gaudí might have wanted to recapture some of the random sprawl of nature in this park, or maybe he wanted to preserve what it’s like to be a kid, discovering new ways to go forth. You would be forgiven for finding his style a little sloppy. It’s meant to be: mashing up Muslim and Catalanian influences, ceramic and tile, Byzantine and natural elements. Even the occult plays into it. I don’t know much about his aesthetic, but Gaudí’s imprint is all over Barcelona, and not just the dripping candle-wax spectacle of the Sagrada Familia (still unfinished after 100 years). Gaudí’s nature-inspired curvilinear surfaces pop up in every corner of the city. It’s like being in a metropolis designed by a mad baker, full of lopsided cakes and intricate confections. In any case, it’s all a bit magical, even daft, something Barcelona’s residents simply accept as natural, normal. But how different the city would be without Gaudí’s creations.

If you keep climbing upward in Park Güell, you come to private villas joined by winding dirt roads. At the top, you’ll find a row of private driveways and porticos overlooking the city below. Fortunately, those on foot can easily locate one of several pathways heading back down to the main entrance.

This is where I should have started my tour, but I came in sideways, and found it even more incredible to come across the two Gaudí-designed lodges, one looking like a church, albeit carved out of gingerbread with white icing on top. These lodges front the entrance gate, with its funky ceramic medallions spelling out “Park Güell.” A stairway leads upward to the Hypostyle Hall, but before going up, you pass the iconic multicolored salamander guarding the faux Doric column shapes leading to the hall. The stairs lead to a shaded, open court ascending to another observation deck. Inside the echoey courtyard, musicians hook up electronic effects pedals and play guitar to passerby. One guy was serenading crowds with a medley of The Deerhunter theme and what sounded like Pink Floyd covers. Others play flamenco, plucking music from the air. The lizard shapes repeat upstairs, laid out in a curved bench decorated with a surreal mix of broken ceramic and pottery designs. It’s the kind of open area where you could spend hours just exploring, watching people, listening to music.  

The main achievement of this park, you realize, is that Gaudí integrated his quirky design sense into the face of a hill, rather than seeing the hill as something that needed bulldozing to conform to his ideas. So it all kind of unfolds organically: the white Doric staircase, curvy arches and rock fountains emerging cheerily from their more pastoral surroundings.

After about an hour of eyeballing this peculiar oasis in the midst of modern-day Barcelona, I knew I had to start heading downward to catch another tour bus back to the city. I found myself lost again among the viaducts, the shaded lattices, the stone pathways leading back, forward, down and across. I decided to exit the same way I’d come in — sideways. My iPod had moved on to more terrestrial sounds by that time. My feet were back on pedestrian ground. But somehow, it all felt a little different.