Barcelona Photoblog: cupola
Showing posts with label cupola. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cupola. Show all posts

February 09, 2009

Sant Pau Hospital: Cupolas

Tiled Cupola at Modernista complex in former Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, Barcelona

Can you imagine a hospital with buildings like this?

Think of a central square with colorful flowers and bloomed orange trees surrounded by brick wall pavilions crowned with beautiful Art Nouveau cupolas and literally covered with sculptures and assorted architectural adornments. That is not a dream, it exists. You only have to visit Sant Pau Hospital (Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau).

Maybe you would say: "No way, I don't like hospitals". Well, the pavilions are not functional anymore so they will not admit you as a patient. Just enter through the main gate on Cartagena street, one block away from L5 blue subway line. You can sit on a bench there, take a lot of wonderful pictures and most of all, enjoy the peaceful atmosphere of the place. When you leave you won't have the feeling you visited a hospital but the certainty that you have been in contact with a beautiful past.

November 06, 2008

Cupola, Via Laietana, Barcelona

Cupola, Via Laietana, Barcelona [enlarge]

After much thought and starting working on my color version I completely deviated from my original path. It turned out that the cupola, the one you can admire if you walk along Via Laietana in Barcelona, looked better in black and white, well almost as I finally gave it this bluish touch. The building in fact has two cupolas and occupies a whole block of this heavy traffic street. Very near you have Palau de la Musica. There are plans to build new hotels in this area to which neighbors openly oppose. 

Street view image

January 07, 2008

Park Guell, Barcelona - Entrance Tower With Spire And Trencadis Work

Park Guell, Barcelona - Entrance Tower With Spire And Trencadis Work [enlarge]

This is a detail of one of the two towers at the main entrance to Park Guell (Olot street). Both buildings were once the houses of the park's keepers. In the picture you can see a narrow spire crowned by a four armed cross as well as a small mushroom-like cupola with some oriental reminiscence and the peculiar battlement around the edge, an ackward combination you only associate with fairy tales or very wild dreams. Notice the impressive trencadis work of the roof, in other words, the mosaic composition created with irregular shards of tiles omnipresent in Gaudian architecture.
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