Casa Batllo

Casa Batllo is a residential building on the Passeig de Gràcia in Barcelona's Eixample district, originally built in 1877 and radically remodeled beginning in 1904 by the architect Antoni Gaudi, with construction on the redesign running through 1906 and his assistants Domenec Sugranes i Gras, Josep Canaleta and Joan Rubio contributing to the work. Gaudi's remodeling gave the building an almost entirely curved form with few straight lines, most famously in a facade covered in trencadis, a mosaic of broken colored ceramic tile fragments, and a scaly, dragon-back tiled roof rising to a bulbous tower topped with religious iconography. Inside, a central light well is lined in blue tilework that grows paler toward the bottom to distribute daylight evenly, and its attic space is supported by sixty catenary arches. UNESCO recognized Casa Batllo as part of the Works of Antoni Gaudi World Heritage listing, extended to include the building in 2005.