The Battló House recovers the joy and creative brilliance of its garden and interior facade

1906. The Marimón Batlló family relax in the interior garden courtyard of their newly built home at 43 Paseo de Gracia . A huge pergola that runs across the entire courtyard protects them from the sun and the prying eyes of the other buildings on the block. It's summer, and they eat in the garden. The children run from the pergola to the flower boxes . They play hide-and-seek, bury-the-soldiers, before someone tells them off. Because in the end, someone always tells them off, but it doesn't matter; they'll be doing the same thing again the next day.

Casa Batlló is one of those iconic buildings that project the city of Barcelona to the world. But it's not just a Modernist architectural gem and one of Antoni Gaudí 's creative highlights; it's also a building with a memory. Familiar, bourgeois, ostentatious. And since yesterday, it looks a little more like how Antoni Gaudí gave it to the Batlló family, with a complete renovation of the building's interior façade, as well as its garden courtyard.

After an investment of 3.5 million euros and two and a half years of study and renovation, the major facelift of the courtyard and interior façade of this distinctive building, famous for its jagged dragon roof and bone-shaped balconies, was finally unveiled yesterday. Time had dulled the vibrancy of its rear, losing not only its original color, shapes, and materials, but also its memory, joy, and brilliance. "The building went through a civil war, a harsh postwar period, and very difficult years. When we acquired it, the family saw that there was a gem hidden within, and we vowed to restore this house's light, brilliance, and enormous energy," comments Nina Bernat, CEO of Casa Batlló.

She was just a young woman in her twenties, fresh out of her interior design studies, when her father, Enric Bernat, the founder of Chupa Chups , asked her to take on the renovation and interior design herself. "My father was a great joker, and I didn't know if he was serious or joking. He told me to take advantage of the opportunity, that things like this only happen once in a lifetime. Of course, at first I felt terribly dizzy, but by surrounding myself with the best experts, we've managed to bring this house back to life. It's been a great journey," says Bernat.

A grand opening party on Thursday completed an adventure that restored the dark color of the façade, as well as the moss-green wooden doors, the cream-colored latticework of the balconies, and the characteristic side mosaics of Gaudí's imagery. Furthermore, the floors were restored with a total of 85,000 porcelain tiles laid one by one, reviving the original random pattern that Gaudí and his technicians drew. "Our aim was to bring this house closer to its original conception. We are committed to caring for this great heritage. We have been carrying out various restorations for 30 years to redesign the experience for our visitors. We have even allowed them to see how we refurbished these spaces so they could participate," says Gary Gautier, general manager of Casa Batlló.

To ensure they restored the building's original appearance, they enlisted the invaluable help of the property's original family, the Marimón Batlló family. They provided the renovation team with photographs showing the courtyard and façade as they had looked on day one. "The first photographs we had were from 1905, when the façade wasn't finished and you could see the creamy color of the plaster primer before it was painted. It took a lot of research and analysis to achieve this space just as Gaudí intended," says Xavier Villanueva, the project's lead architect.

When Le Corbusier asked Dalí what the architecture of the future should be like, he was clear: "It must be soft and hairy," a clear reference to the work of Gaudí, "the last great genius of architecture." This renovation makes this even clearer. Among other interventions, the stucco, ceramic mosaics, and glass have been cleaned and consolidated. The structure of the balconies has been reinforced, and wrought iron railings and grilles have been restored, restoring the original lead-white color.

Furthermore, the heather pergola in the garden has been rebuilt in a parabolic shape, and the white and blue planters have been replaced as they were at the beginning of the 20th century. This has improved natural ventilation, using a mechanism devised by Gaudí himself, which served as a natural air conditioner. Forty-six artisans and sixty technicians were involved in achieving this small miracle.

The most laborious task, however, was laying the patio floor, with 85,000 ceramic pieces from the Valencian firm Mosaicos Nolla , placed one by one. "At first, we saw that the geometric pattern the pieces displayed was actually random, and we tried to imitate that same pattern using the photographs we had and augmented reality," says Joan Olona, ​​another of the architects responsible for the project.

Next year marks the 150th anniversary of Antoni Gaudí's birth, and new surprises are expected to celebrate the creation of this visionary architect. For now, his Casa Batlló has regained its original splendor. This building, listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO , generated revenues of €56.27 million in 2023, with a net profit of €27.99 million, figures that rose again in 2024. In short, Casa Batlló is the world's leading historic building management company.