The City Homage To BARCELONA

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Its best-known master was, of course, Antonio Gaudi (1852-1926). A descendant of Catalan metalsmiths, Gaudi introduced a wholly new idea of built space: an organic kind of space, not bounded by rigid lines, that undulates, flares, inflates, twists and contains stunning metaphors and moments of theater. The basement of the palace he built off the Ramblas for his main patron, Eusebi Guell, could serve as a set for The Ring -- not surprisingly, since Catalans in the 1880s were crazy for Wagner, the newest of new composers. Gaudi's Casa Mila, on Passeig de Gracia, known to Barcelonans as La Pedrera -- the Stone Quarry -- was intended to suggest a seaworn cliff, and its iron balconies fringe it like kelp.

+ His architecture is that of a great sculptor -- witness the totemic chimneys and ventilators on the Casa Mila and the Palau Guell -- and a remarkable painter too: the facade of Casa Batllo, on the opposite side of Gracia, is as atmospheric as a Monet, sparkling with drifts of blue and green mosaic. Nor should one miss the iron dragon gate of the Finca Guell, or the crypt of the Colonia Guell -- the chapel of an industrial community for weavers at Santa Coloma de Cervello, half an hour's drive from Barcelona -- or the Parc Guell, with its ravishing Hansel-and-Gretel pavilions and its undulating benches covered in their mosaic of broken tiles; or, of course, the Sagrada Familia.

The Sagrada Familia (which is not a cathedral but an "expiatory temple" dedicated to the cult of the Holy Family) is Gaudi's best-known building, the logo of Barcelona as the Statue of Liberty is of New York City. Unfortunately, because most of its designs were lost in the Spanish Civil War, nobody knows how Gaudi would have finished it, and the newly completed sections look dead compared with the parts Gaudi supervised. The facade sculptures by Josep Subirachs are particularly inert and vulgar. They seem to epitomize the moment when the religious art of Catholic Europe died for want of anything better to do, almost exactly 2,000 years after it began.

Tradition -- and tourism -- insists the Sagrada Familia is Gaudi's masterpiece. It is not. The Casa Mila and the crypt of the Colonia Guell, among others, are superior. But in any case, not all the best modernista building and decor are by Gaudi. Other and hardly lesser Catalan architects await discovery by the visitor. Two names in particular stand out: Lluis Domenech i Montaner (1850-1923) and Josep Puig i Cadafalch (1867-1957).

Puig, a brilliant eclectic, produced some of the signature buildings of Barcelona. One is the Casa Amatller, next to Gaudi's Casa Batllo, a fecund parody of a Dutch burgher's housefront, with mock-medieval sculptures by the gifted Eusebi Arnau -- including animals blowing glass and taking photos, these having been the owner's hobbies. Another is Puig's exquisitely decorated house for the Baron Quadras, now a museum of musical instruments; a third, the Venetian-Gothic Casa Marti, housed the center of Barcelona's artistic bohemia, the Four Cats cafe, where established artists like Ramon Casas hobnobbed with younger ones like Picasso.