Inside Casa Batlló: the main floor, the blue light well and the attic of sixty arches

Inside Casa Batlló you go from the family hallway up to the rooftop: the main floor with the study and the drawing room over Passeig de Gràcia, the restored back courtyard, the light well lined with blue tiles, the attic of sixty catenary arches and the chimneys of the dragon's back.

From the pavement, Casa Batlló is a façade. Inside it is something else: an early 20th-century bourgeois home where Gaudí designed everything down to the door handles. This guide walks through what you see inside, room by room, in the order the house itself describes on its official website.

Barcelona: all the guides and where to stay →

An 1877 house remade from the inside

The building was put up in 1877 by Emili Sala Cortés, and in 1903 it was bought by the textile industrialist Josep Batlló i Casanovas. Between 1904 and 1906 Gaudí carried out a complete renovation: he changed the façade, but he also redistributed the interior walls and enlarged the light well. We cover the symbolism of the façade in what Casa Batlló means, and opening hours and the best time to go in Casa Batlló without the rush.

For the interior, Gaudí worked with the finest craftsmen of the day in wrought iron, wood, glass, ceramics and stone. The house calls it a total work of art and proves it in small details: the doors of each flat are marked with modernista letters, the handles and banisters are shaped to fit the hand, and the glass on the landings distorts the light well's tiles into ripples of water.

The family hallway and staircase

The visit begins in the Batlló family's private hallway, reached from the shared ground-floor entrance through a modernista iron gate. The official website describes it as an underwater world that recalls Jules Verne, with skylights that look like tortoise shells, vaulted walls with sinuous shapes and a staircase of fine wood whose banister mimics the spine of a great animal climbing towards the main floor.

The main floor, where the Batllós lived

The main floor is the heart of the house and the one that best explains how Barcelona's bourgeoisie lived at the time. First comes Mr Batlló's study, with a curious mushroom-shaped fireplace. Then the main drawing room, dominated by a huge window that forms a gallery over Passeig de Gràcia, designed for seeing and being seen.

In the drawing room it is worth looking up and around: the ceiling is completely undulating, a nod to the force of the sea, and the large oak doors have organic shapes with coloured glass set into them.

The back courtyard, in its 1906 colours

From the family's private dining room, at the back of the same floor, you step out into a courtyard that Gaudí imagined as a small oasis to enjoy in the afternoon. The façade on that side is a vertical garden of glass, ceramics and iron imitating a climbing plant, like a bougainvillea, with wavy iron balconies for branches. The courtyard has planters covered in ceramics and glass and a heather pergola for shade.

This is the part that has changed most in recent years. According to the house, in 2024 the rear façade had its first full restoration, after partial work in the 1950s and 1990s, and the original colours turned up under several layers of paint: the stucco, which looked cream, was actually black. The courtyard floor, a puzzle of 85,000 pieces of Nolla mosaic, was replicated with the help of old photographs to recover its 1906 pattern.

The light well: bluer at the top, paler below

The light well spreads the air and light coming in through the skylight across the whole house. Gaudí enlarged it (there was one and he made two) so that natural light would reach every room, and lined it with tiles in different shades of blue: deeper at the top, where light is plentiful, and paler below, where it is scarce. That is why it looks bluer the higher you look.

The windows follow the same logic, small up high and getting bigger as you go down. Along the bottom they have wooden slats that open or close to regulate ventilation. In the middle of the light well is the lift, whose original wooden cabin is still in service.

The attic of sixty arches and the rooftop

Up top the mood changes. The attic was the service area for the tenants, with laundry rooms and storerooms, and it is white, simple and full of light. It is made up of a run of sixty catenary arches which, according to the house, evoke the ribcage of an animal; the visit page simply calls it the belly of the dragon.

On the rooftop is the so-called dragon's back, in tiles of several colours, although the real stars are the four clusters of sinuous, multicoloured chimneys, designed to stop air blowing back into the house. Check what each ticket includes: on the official website, the rooftop is listed in the Silver, Gold and Platinum tickets but not in the Blue one (checked in October 2026).

The visit ends by going down to the basement via a staircase and atrium by the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, to the Gaudí Cube, an immersive room showing Refik Anadol's work ‘Gaudí Dreams’.

Taking your time if you live in Barcelona

If you are spending a few months in the city you can pick the day and time without the pressure of a short trip. The general visit runs between 9:00 and 19:15; the Blue visit lasts about 1 hour and the others 1 hour and 15 minutes, with an audio guide in 15 languages included in the ticket (checked in October 2026).

The house recommends that wheelchair users come between 16:00 and 19:00, outside the busiest hours, and says the whole house can be visited, rooftop included. Children under 12 go free with an adult. Pushchairs are not allowed inside: they store them for you and lend baby carriers.

Checked

Details checked on 17 October 2026 on the official Casa Batlló website: pages on the interior, the history, what each ticket includes, the FAQs and the restoration of the rear façade and courtyard.