… Is certainly Sagrada Familia, which is also his most famous, as well as the largest structure by volume and height. Larger in site area, however, and much more popular as measured by visitor density, is Park Guell. These are the only two Gaudi sites one must pre-book in order to be assured of a visit.

Surely many more people visit S. Familia, but it’s such a large building that you can find a space for yourself even while surrounded by others. Park Guell is another story. The park itself covers 45 acres, but the Gaudi portions comprise only a fraction of that.

We started with a bus ride, on a city bus that was crowded when we got on and jammed by the time we reached our stop, at which two-thirds of the passengers dismounted. I greatly amused a companion by exclaiming, Surely all these people aren’t going to Park Guell!

They were.

Pathways and promenades, vistas and plazas, pavilions and viaducts, all were crawling with humanity. There were long lines for entry into buildings, stairs were packed railing-to-railing, and even to take a picture you had to wait for others to finish. It reminded me of the Mona Lisa, a small painting protected by thick glass, live guards, and velvet ropes, with a long line of hopefuls waiting for a brief glimpse.

Some–I mean all–of our photos contain people as well as things. This is the exit, originally designed as the main entrance to what was intended to be a gated community, but it was too far from Barcelona to attract tenants, so Gaudi sold it to the city as a park. It’s flanked by two lovely little houses but we didn’t get a picture of the entire expanse. It’s known as the Stairway to Heaven. I think this predates Led Zeppelin.

The Guardian of the Stairway, followed by a close-up of his hide.

Here’s one of many adorable edifices that most people of the time didn’t want to move this far to live in. There are several, mostly repurposed as museums with additional entry fees, but all the structures are of this ilk. This could be a restroom for all I remember.

Here’s a closer look at the top of the colonnade that crowns the Stairway entrance. It is a plaza outlined by a very long Dragon Bench. You can some heads poking up, representing a few of the hundreds of people on the plaza.

My husband took that picture from our favorite spot, a relatively unvisited promenade perhaps 200 meters long, near a small forest. It was quiet enough to hear cries of the ubiquitous monk parakeets, and included the statue of the water-bearing woman below.

The original entrance is the tourist exit, as I mentioned. The tourist entrance is near the top of the park, where one can find a colonnade that is sort of a precursor of the forest nave of S. Familia in the way the columns form a canopy at the top. Note some are tilted, as real trees would be.

From the top, or close to the top is a view of far-away Barcelona and the Mediterranean Sea, with which I will end this post.