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Two blocks up from Gaudí’s Casa Batlló stands the house of another Batlló. Josep Vilaseca built it for the industrialist Enric Batlló in the mid-1890s, and the city’s catalogue calls its brick-and-stone corner a very carefully composed piece of design.
At a glance
Casa Enric Batlló occupies the corner of Passeig de Gràcia and Carrer de Mallorca, in the heart of the Eixample. It was designed by Josep Vilaseca i Casanovas for the industrialist Enric Batlló i Batlló, and the City of Barcelona dates the building to 1895–96. It is protected as a bé cultural d’interès local, the city’s level B. Since the 1980s the house has been a hotel; today it is the Monument Hotel.
Key facts
- Where: Passeig de Gràcia 75, corner of Carrer de Mallorca 259–263, Eixample, Barcelona
- Architect: Josep Vilaseca i Casanovas
- Client: Enric Batlló i Batlló, industrialist
- Date: 1895–96 according to the municipal catalogue; the Passeig de Gràcia association gives the works as 1891–1896
- Style: aesthetic historicism with early modernista elements (municipal catalogue)
- Protection: Bé cultural d’interès local (BCIL), level B of the Barcelona heritage catalogue, record 1525
- Current use: Monument Hotel; a watch shop occupies part of the ground floor
- Coordinates: 41.393733, 2.162239 · open in Google Maps
History
Enric Batlló i Batlló commissioned this house from Josep Vilaseca, an architect who had already worked for the family. The Passeig de Gràcia shopkeepers’ association gives 1891 as the start of the works and 1896 as their end; the municipal catalogue records the building as 1895–96.
The catalogue singles out how Vilaseca handled the corner. Instead of a simple chamfer, he turned it with a polygonal body on a half-hexagon plan, which was originally meant to be crowned by a spire, like a tower. Around it he composed a facade that mixes medieval references (coats of arms, stone parapets, a strong cornice) with floral tiles on the top floor that already point towards modernisme.
The house stayed residential for most of the twentieth century. It was converted into a hotel in the 1980s and opened in 1986 as the Hotel Condes de Barcelona, the name still used in the city’s catalogue; the catalogue notes that the plan of the house lent itself well to the conversion. The same building now houses the Monument Hotel.
What you see
The photograph shows the house from Passeig de Gràcia. On the left the corner body rises as a tower of stacked balconies, each with a curved iron railing, and ends in a small lookout ringed by ironwork. The main front is a panel of red exposed brick framed by broad strips of patterned stonework in grey and brown, so that the brick reads as an infill between piers of stone.
A continuous iron balcony runs across the principal floor; above it the windows have individual balconies, and at the top a second continuous balcony crosses the facade in front of a band of small decorated panels between the windows. The ground floor opens in wide arches with ironwork in their upper parts. At the time of the photo the shop fronts carried the names of jewellery and watch brands, and the hotel sign sat over the corner entrance.
Practical information
- The building is a working hotel; the facade can be seen from the street at any time.
- The best view of the corner is from the opposite side of Carrer de Mallorca.
- The ground-floor shops have their own opening hours and are not part of the hotel.
Getting there
The nearest metro station is Diagonal (lines L3 and L5), about three minutes’ walk up Passeig de Gràcia. Passeig de Gràcia station (L2, L3, L4 and regional trains) is a ten-minute walk down the avenue.
Nearby
- Casa Milà (La Pedrera), Gaudí’s apartment building, about 190 m up the avenue.
- Palau del Baró de Quadras, by Puig i Cadafalch, on Avinguda Diagonal.
- Casa Batlló, the other Batlló house, two blocks down Passeig de Gràcia.
- Passeig de Gràcia, the avenue itself.
Sources
- Ajuntament de Barcelona, Catàleg de Patrimoni, record 1525 — Casa Enric Batlló (Hotel Condes de Barcelona): architect, date 1895–96, level B, the corner body and the adaptation to hotel use.
- Associació Passeig de Gràcia, Casa Enric Batlló: de palauet neogòtic a hotel de luxe: works 1891–1896, the hotel opened as Condes de Barcelona in 1986, today the Monument Hotel.
- Monument Hotel — the hotel’s own description of the Enric Batlló house as its home.
- Viquipèdia, Casa Enric Batlló — general description, used as a cross-check only.
- OpenStreetMap / Nominatim — position and address, returned as 75, Passeig de Gràcia, la Dreta de l’Eixample, Barcelona.
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