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![]() I wasn`t looking forward to going through the security at Heathrow because I always, always get searched. ![]() I don`t know what I would have done without you Roger. Bless him, he helped me pack up, deliver the keys to the Renting Agent and took me to the airport. He found a crazy woman who didn`t know which way to turn. My good friend Roger came over to give me a hand. I was up at 5am washing and polishing the house before I left it ready for someone to move in. My last day at home for a while, and it was a long day. There’s also one more children’s room, where now a video is displayed, before you retrace your steps back to find the service stair that will lead you upstairs.Get Diary for Jean`s Year Outįive days to go before I leave Old Blighty on my year-long holiday! The corridor takes you next to the bathroom (devoid of bathtubs and other props now), and a toilet room with a toilet seat overwhelmingly decorated in blue oriental patterns. Of course, he didn’t need much: after all, he was the owner of the entire building! This one, though, lacks of decoration and it’s quickly seen. The room is connected from one end with her husband’s bedroom: in a time when arranged marriages were the norm, it wasn’t unusual that the spouses didn’t share the same bed except for fulfilling their marital obligations… To see that room you’ll have to walk around the shaft of the main room – my recommendation is that you see the children rooms first, then see their fathers’ room. A couple of black and white pictures on display will help you get the idea of how the room looked like when she lived there. One iconic piece of furniture by Antoni Gaudi decorated the house: a chaise longue that continues to be owned by the Guell family and only rarely is loaned for public art shows. She had also a dressing room, balconies overlooking the main room, and her own bedroom with the balcony under the pergola you saw from the backyard. She had her own living room, decorated with a monumental fireplace topped with an image of her patron saint, Saint Elizabeth (her maiden’s name was Isabel Lopez of Comillas). The kids would play the organ (one of the largest in the world in those times) for the guests.īut before you visit them, head instead towards the inside part of the building to see Ms. ![]() Here the Guell threw public receptions, parties with ballroom dancing (the band stood on the staircase that leads to the upper floor) and even private mass, as two massive metal doors hide a small chapel with side benches for the family. Now you can go back and enter the main room, whose ceiling is a marvelous hyperboloidal dome with small opening simulating a starry night. A secret passage around the room decorated with a geometric wooden lattice allowed the maids to spy on the waiting guests so they could report to Count Guell before they were received. The powder room in the other end was used by the ladies while waiting. You’ll have to imagine the lavish decoration that would have been there, to match the intricate wooden ceiling dotted with real precious gems. Don’t enter the main hall yet: go all the way to the end of the passage way to the waiting room. #LUXURY INDOOR DOME SHAPE MAGIC FOREST KIDS PLAY TENT WINDOWS#Now you can retrace your steps back to the staircase, and follow the “hall of the lost steps”, with the arched windows and many columns that allowed the light in, and still protecting the residents privacy and hiding the unpleasant views (the building across the street was a brothel…). A quite forward thinking idea that the Barcelona city council copied for the Olympic Games by opening up university faculties in degraded neighborhoods to attract young students and help improving the district. It was an unusual choice, because the rest of the upper class was already moving to the Eixample, and because Guell thought that having his elegant visitors to go through the poor neighborhood might help rising the area vibes and hopefully improve it. Eusebi Guell decided then to purchase the neighboring plots with the idea of extending the mansions, but eventually asked Gaudi to build a new one from scratch facing the rundown Raval district instead of the main street. When Guell’s father passed away, he inherited two family properties in La Rambla, which until the construction of the Eixample district had been the residential area of the local high society. ![]() They soon became best friends, and the Count started hiring him for small projects at first, and bigger enterprises. He met Antoni Gaudi in 1878, after seeing a piece of furniture designed by the architect that won an award in the Universal Exhibition in Paris. He was an extraordinary businessman and an educated intellectual with a visionary open mind. Eusebi Guell was the second richest person in Spain, second to his father in law, the Marquis of Comillas. ![]()
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