Casa Batlló

This guide to Casa Batlló in Barcelona opens in 1906, the year Barcelona's city council gave its top architecture prize to a rival house up the same street instead of this one. It follows Josep Batlló, the textile baron who hired Antoni Gaudí with total freedom to remake an ordinary apartment block amid a street-wide contest of wealthy neighbors, and the legend Gaudí chose to hide in the design. Look up at the roofline and the tower above the entrance as you take in the facade.