Would you like to meet the genie of Barcelona?

Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia, the large region of Mediterranean Spain bordering France, and architect Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926) is the capital of Barcelona. The fabulous city wouldn’t be what it now is without his works. This is far from an exaggeration. Just think of its greatest icon, the Holy Family cathedral – begun in 1882 and due to open in 2026 –, or the Güell Park (1926), an almost real utopia, both designed by Gaudí. And then, among many other genius creations, there’s the Vicens House, his first masterpiece, now classified as World Heritage.

Gaudí is an architectural genius, like the American Frank Lloyd Wright or the Swiss Le Corbusier. He belongs to Catalan Modernism, the cultural movement that revolutionised this part of the country at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. At that time, Catalonia’s economic progress made its industrialists and businessmen great patrons of the arts. Gaudí was one of the most benefited.

Among these wealthy and enlightened people was Manuel Vicens, a successful stock exchange agent, and a man of good taste. In 1878, he commissioned Gaudí to design a villa on the elegant Carolines Street, completed in 1885.

Visiting the Vicens House – on a private tour, of course – is a transformative experience. Inspired by themes from the Orient, it’s a total inhabitable sculpture, right up to the surprising terrace on the fourth floor. Gaudí didn’t just design the building: every detail inside, the furniture, the wrought iron, the tiles, the lighting, everything was conceived by him, with eccentric mastery. It’s a revelry of color, fine woods and artistic vibrancy. What’s more, the house is decorated with 32 paintings by another important name in Catalan art, Torrescassana.

Let yourself be absorbed by the impact of the Vicens House. It reveals a time when, in the great cities of Europe, the “one-percent” combined entrepreneurial vision and artistic genius, promoting salons in which intellectual life truly changed the world into a better place. And all while producing stunning beauty, like the Vicens House.