In our travel around Spain we have been to Santa Coloma de Cervelló to visit one of the seven works of Antoni Gaudí i Cornet included in this WHS, the crypt of the Colònia Güell. It was commissioned to Gaudí in 1898 and he reflected for ten years on the project before beginning the building in 1908; only the crypt was built when the work was interrupted in 1914.

We have seen only this Gaudí’s work because we haven’t been in Barcelona this time because it takes to much time to visit it for combining it with the tour of almost all Spain. We decided also to visit the church apart from the travel, programmed for the future, to Barcelona, because it is hard to reach it from the city by public transports, even if it isn’t far away.

We arrived to the Colònia Güell (from the motorway A2) when the church was closed, because its opening time is from 10 to 14 and from 15 to 19 (on Saturday and Sunday from 10 to 15. So we visited before it the village (about which you can find information on the web site http://www.santacolomadecervello.org/municipi/colonia/colonia.htm), where a community working in textile industry lived. I think that the whole industrial village, even if it isn’t even on the Spanish Tentative List, can be inscribed on the WHL separately from the WHS of Gaudí’s works (in which is inscribed only the church being the only one Gaudí’s building in the village). It is an outstanding example of industrial archaeology and probably the best application of Catalan modernism in an industrial context, with beautiful works of important architects like Francesc Berenguer i Mestres and Joan Rubió i Bellver. The main features of the village, that depended directly from the huge factory, also built in modernist style, are the l’Ordal House, the l’Espinal House, the school with the teacher’s house, the parish house and the cooperative. The industrial village reminds me the similar Italian WHS of Crespi d’Adda; the application of an important modern style in an industrial complex can be seen also in the WHS of the cool mine Zollverein in Essen in Germany, where the functionalism style was used.

Then we bought the ticket for the church in the Tourist Office and went to visit it. It is really the strangest architectural work I have ever seen. I was really overwhelmed by its irregular and seemingly chaotic forms. It can seem to be everything apart a church. It is build in brick and stone and outside is characterized by the beautiful and coloured oval stained glass windows, protected by a kind of iron grate and inserted in oval sharp niches decorated with mosaics made of ceramic fragments. There is also a porch with beautiful oblique columns and vaults also decorated with mosaics, of which that over the main portal is the nicest. The interior is also the strangest I have ever seen: a sort of Neo-Gothic structure, reinterpreted in the modernist style, with all features completely different from each other. There are many different types of combined vaults and twisted columns. Also the furniture is modernist: altars, chairs, stoups… Today’s terrace on the roof of the crypt, which in the original project had to be the floor of the huge church, is also strange: there are three rectangular portals and a small bell tower of the church that had to be built.

The church, completely authentic and perfectly conserved, is absolutely worthy to be visited and justifies its inscription as one of the most important outstanding architectural works of Gaudí, who, with its creative contribute and exceptional eclectic and personal style, revolutionised the architecture and the building techniques. However I think that, even if I haven’t visited them, also other Gaudí’s works could be included in this WHS, constituted of only seven buildings.

In the photo there is the exterior of the crypt of the Colònia Güell.