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

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.

Santiago Calatrava's Montjuic Communications Tower, Barcelona

This is Santiago Calatrava's Communications Tower standing against the sun in the middle of the big square at the Olympic Ring on Montjuic Hill. The structure is located near Palau Sant Jordi sports center, Picornell swimming pools and the Olympic Stadium. 

When you think of this artist, Calatrava, you think about impossible structures of steel and glass that resemble skeletons, carcasses with exposed ribs, sails, etc. In this case we are just talking about a 136 meter high tower that was meant only for telecommunications. But still it doesn't look like one of those horrible antennas full of dishes. It is weird I know but elegant at the same time. 

The tower's white steel structure with the tip tapering like a flame, does recall the Olympic torch or perhaps the jet engine of some extraterrestrial airship and oddly enough it doesn't stand in the way, maybe because of the line of nearby columns illuminated at night or the immensity of the square that evokes Soviet or Maoist grandiloquent and megalomaniac architecture. I digress. 

Some brief facts about Calatrava then: Born on July 28, 1951 in Valencia, Spain, he studied architecture in the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura (Valencia) and later on took post-graduate courses in civil engineering in Zurich. His work is well known all over the world so I will not deal with the many projects in his prolific career that you can consult in the following useful links:

• Santiago Calatrava: The Official Site
• Wikipedia: Santiago Calatrava 
• Santiago Calatrava's Buildings Communications Tower: Another Approach 
• Calatrava's Montjuic Communications Tower: Previous Posts

Castles: Salvana Tower at Santa Coloma de Cervello

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An abandoned castle near Colonia Guell in Santa Coloma de Cervelló, Barcelona city. Known as Salvana Tower, the castle was first documented in 992, the year it was sold by Ramón Borrel i Ermengol to the lord of Masquefa castle whose heirs first acquired the Cervelló name and the title of Baron until 1297. After that it was occupied by different illustrious families until 1857. Most of the castles I see here in Catalonia are lost up there in the mountains and I rarely have time to take my camera and climb up for some good pictures, so being this close has been an interesting experience. It is a pity that being so near to Gaudi's Colonia Güell , nothing is done to restore the tower, at least. Behind the building there is a beautiful valley the dwellers must have been scrutinizing constantly for different reasons and in between, the highway to Barcelona.

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Barcelona City Walls: Defense Tower

Back in the month of May I posted a picture about some wild flowers growing on one of the last preserved fragments of Barcelona City Walls, and I promised that further ahead I would show a more illustrative photo of the bulwark itself. So here you are, a defense tower part of the western wall. There was a first wall built by king James 1st in the 13th century running parallel to where La Rambla is now and a hundred years later the latter was enclosed by an outer wall, this time engulfing El Raval (on your right while walking down La Rambla towards the sea). This image you see is part of such outer wall, at Avinguda del Parallel, near Reials Drassanes (Royal Dockyards), turned into Barcelona's Museu Marítim (Naval Museum).

Google Earth View of the Barcelona City Walls: Defense Tower