Casa Vicens Gaudí

This guide to Casa Vicens in Barcelona opens in 1878, when a 26-year-old, still-unknown Antoni Gaudi walked onto an empty plot in the village of Gracia to measure it for a summer house, and found the site covered in yellow wildflowers he never forgot. You'll hear how a Barcelona stockbroker named Manuel Vicens hired him anyway, and how the young architect answered with a riot of Moorish and Oriental pattern that stunned the city. Look for the dining room's thirty-two commissioned paintings by Francesc Torrescassana.