Güell Pavilions

The so-called Pavellons Güell, or Güell Pavilions, is a complex of buildings in the neighborhood of Pedralbes, Barcelona, by the Catalan Modernist architect Antoni Gaudí, built between 1884 and 1887.

Gaudí received the commission from his great patron, count Eusebi Güell.

Güell had an estate in the Les Corts district of the small town of Sarrià (now part of Barcelona), which included two pieces of land known as Can Feliu and Can Cuyàs de la Riera. The architect Joan Martorell i Montells, one of Gaudí’s teachers, had built a Caribbean-style mansion, which stood almost where the Palau Reial de Pedralbes now stands. This house was called Torre Satalia, so christened by Jacinto Verdaguer, a friend of the family. Gaudí was commissioned to remodel the house and build a perimeter wall with gates.

Gaudí proposed an Orientalist design, somewhat reminiscent of Mudejar art. He planned an ashlar wall with several gates, of which the main gate would be a wrought-iron grille in the shape of a dragon, with glass eyes; it represented Ladon, offspring of Typhus, the dragon that guarded the Garden of the Hesperides, which was overcome by Hercules as one of his twelve labours—an episode that was narrated by Jacint Verdaguer in his poem L'Atlàntida, dedicated to Antonio López y López, first marquis of Comillas, who was Eusebi Güell’s brother in law. Over the dragon there is an antimony orange-tree, another allusion to the Hesperides. The shape of the dragon corresponds with the position of the stars in the Serpens constellation, because Ladon was turned into a snake as a punishment for stealing the oranges.

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