Industrial Art Nouveau around Barcelona (9h) – only weekdays
From: 550 €
This full day Exclusive Art Nouveau private tour is mainly focused on Applied Arts within the industrial Art Nouveau around Barcelona. In each of the two locations the itinerary will be done on foot and commented by a local guide with a focus in Modernisme, Catalan Art Nouveau.
Thanks to the Industrial Revolution, the city of Terrassa specialized in the wool industry and grew spectacularly. Its landscape was populated with factories, warehouses, workers ‘and manufacturers’ houses, service buildings, dwellings ‘Institutions and leisure spaces. In Colònia Güell, an industrial village created around a factory from the Güell family, you will discover interesting spots like Cripta Güell, Antoni Gaudí’s unfinished church.
During the morning you will discover the beauty of Art Nouveau in Terrassa, the second city with more beautiful (and numerous) Art Nouveau buildings of Catalonia (only after Barcelona) visiting a variety of buildings, from old factories to markets, pharmacies or private homes. You will do an in-depth visit of the interior of at least three Art Nouveau locations (an old textile factory, a bourgeoise residence and a residential house).
After a having lunch in a restaurant with views to a well preserved Art Nouveau large factory building dated from 1907, you will spend two hours in the Industrial Colony of Colònia Güell. The Güell family was an industrial nissaga of Catalonia and the father of the family was a friend of Antoni Gaudí. He assigned to Gaudí works like Palau Güell or Park Güell, and also some buildings and the Church in the Colònia Güell.
At the turn of the Century Art Nouveau influenced all buildings of the architecture: from houses to schools to churches. The village church is Cripta Güell, the unfinished church by Antoni Gaudí that helped him design Sagrada Família.
Your private guide will situate these works within the context of the Industrial Catalan society of the time. Let’s book this Exclusive private tour and visite two unique destinations in one day!
As these places are not easily reachable on public transport we recommend you to book a car/minivan with chauffeur to bring you there. If you have your own car and want to do the private tour with your car please don’t book it.
Prices: Starting at 550€ (if you have your own transport)
Please make a reservation to know the price for your group size, up to 12 people. If you have a group of more than 12 people, Please Contact Us.
Description
Itinerary
During this 9 hour private tour you will travel back to the beginning of the 20th Century and discover how industrialists lived at that time. You will discover several important buildings in the second most important industrial city of Catalonia in 1900, and also a small village built to allocate a factory owned by the patron of Antoni Gaudí.
If you book our transport, our driver will pick you up in front of your hotel with a luxury Mercedes car and bring you to Terrassa, where the tour will start. If you have your own transport, we will meet in front of Masia Freixa in Terrassa, an old textile factory and an emblematic building of Gaudinian inspiration built by the architect Lluís Muncunill i Parellada.
In Terrassa you will meet your guide specialised in Art Nouveau, who in 3 hours and a half will show you 15 interesting Art Nouveau buildings. You will start by discovering the exterior and the interior of Masia Freixa. After, you will continue the walking private tour visiting the exterior of different Art Nouveau buildings. One of them had the largest metallic structure of the city of that time. Another is a pharmacy designed in 1908 using a combination of applied arts. Two other interesting buildings were designed by the municipal architect Muncunill.
One of the highlights of the visit will be a 45 minutes visit to a great bourgeois residence. Our fantastic guide will give you plenty of historic references and tell you lots of stories that will make your day. Mondays and Tuesdays this house is closed, so these days we will spend more time visiting other amazing places in Terrassa. If you want you may stop for a coffee in a beautifully restored Art Nouveau old factory.
After, you will discover as many as 9 different buildings, each one with a specific interest. On of them is the Old Theatre. If you are interested, from Monday to Friday and as long as there are no preparations for functions, you may be able to access the lobby and the foyer and admire its modernist details (painting, mosaics, stained glass, wrought iron …).
You will go visit the garden of a warehouse dated from 1893 that was used in the textile industry that now is the headquarters of an association of enterprises. Its construction reminds more of a small palace than a warehouse. It has the square floor plan and an English-style garden.
Finally you will visit a residential house that retains the influences of the artistic movement of the Austrian secession. If you choose our private chauffeur service, the driver will pick you up there and bring you to the restaurant. If you choose your own transport service, be aware that you will need to walk 20 minutes to go to the restaurant, or take a taxi instead.
Lunch will be served in the Restaurant Terrassa del Museu, located in the premises of an industrial building back from the Art Nouveau times, with fantastic views over what was a great factory a Century ago. The former Vapor Aymerich, Amat i Jover, once one of the most spectacular factories in Europe, was designed by Lluís Muncunill (1907) and if there is some time you will have the chance to visit its interior. This restaurant is closed on Mondays, a day that we will go to Restaurant Tivoli or Restaurant Tapiñas according to the group preference.
After lunch you will head by car/minivan to Colònia Güell. Accompanied with your private guide you will have an amusing walk around the village. It is interesting that Colònia Güell has been preserved and nowadays looks exactly as it was more than a hundred years ago when it was an industrial colony. You will see from outside the school and the houses where the workers lived, and you will compare them with the house of the managers of the factory. You will immerse yourself in the atmosphere that existed in the village at the start of the 20th century,
The main importance of the church of the Colonia Güell is that this is where Gaudi brought together for the first time all of his architectural innovations. Antoni Gaudí said that if the church had been finished it would have been a “monumental model of the Sagrada Familia”.
The whole private tour is an Exlcusive way to discover the Industrial Art Nouveau heritage around Barcelona. A must for Art Nouveau lovers looking for a different tour with unique and interesting content!
Departure time: 9:00
Highlights of Terrassa private tour
You will spend more than half an hour visiting each of these three buildings (inside and outside):
Masia Freixa – Built between 1905 and 1910 on the structure of a spectacular old textile factory of the industrialist Josep Freixa. The rounded profiles and the use of the parabolic arc and the glass cover of the roof make the building one of the jewels of the modernist heritage of the city.
Burgeois residence – Visiting a great house with garden you will see how industrial and bourgeois families lived in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and have an interesting Art Nouveau decoration. In the house, built at the beginning of the 19th century and renovated in 1911 following an eclectic modernist style, there are various decorative motifs of great interest, such as the paintings of Pere Viver, Joaquim Vancells and Alexandre de Riquer, cabinetmaking, stained glass, glassware and sculptural reliefs of columns belonging to Modernisme, Catalan Art Nouveau.
On Monday and Tuesdays this building is closed, that’s why on these days we will take some time visiting other great modernist buildings – the Old Theatre on Mondays and the additional factory building on Tuesdays.
Residential House – the facades are embossed and sgraffito with floral motifs, the roof is formed by tiles of a very particular design of glazed ceramics and stands out the fence of the garden, with pillars decorated with ceramic trencadís and wrought iron grills of modernist style.
Since they are all fairly close together, they can be visited on foot.
The usual idea of industrial heritage includes the most emblematic buildings where the industrial processes were actually carried out. In the case of the textile industry, this heritage comprises the chimneys, the steam-powered factories, the mills and the warehouses.
Highlights of Colònia Güell private tour
Colònia Güell – A former mill village founded in 1890 by the bourgeois businessman and patron Eusebi Güell in Santa Coloma de Cervelló. The village was conceived, starting with the textile factory, as an urban unit of dwellings and facilities for the workers (houses, school, church, shop, club, etc.). The aim was to achieve social peace in an environment controlled by the factory owner.
The path through the industrial Colonia will captivate you because of its charm and the tranquility. This vestige of the Art Nouveau era inspires through the palpable 19th century atmosphere kept alive between its streets and buildings.
You will be guided around this village that was built around the factory to discover beautiful, singular buildings created by modernist architects where on can see the most typical characteristics of said movement. On the one hand, the use of brick walls as a vindication of a Catalan folk architecture, and the incorporation of new techniques and new materials such as iron or ceramic trencadís. Examples of interesting buildings are the Cooperative Headquarters, the Doctor’s House and Ca l’Ordal.
This church is considered one of the essential pieces of 20th Century architecture in view of the major innovation consisting of the use of inclined columns and vaults in the shape of hyperbolic paraboloids and on account of the wonderful combination of materials.
Muncunill, the Art Nouveau architect of Terrassa
Languages
This tour will be held in English, French, Spanish or Catalan. Select language in the scroll below the calendar.
Inclusions
In each of the two stops of the tour, a local certified guide expert and in love with Art Nouveau. Our tours are 100% Art Nouveau which means we visit only Art Nouveau buildings (unless you have other request) .
Entrance tickets to all the places visited in Terrassa and Colònia Güell.
Exclusions
Lunch at the Terrassa restaurant. Other Food and drinks during the tour. For example, the old factory transformed into a Café.
Transport with our chauffer with private transport to Colònia Güell and Terrassa, and return to Barcelona (extra fee).
If you require us, we can provide you with Airport pick-up and/or drop off (extra fee).
Additional Info
Departure Days: This private tour takes places from Monday to Friday. Due to opening times of the buildings visited, if you only can do the tour on weekends please Contact Us. On weekends we can offer you a Half Day private tour to Terrassa. Contact Us for more details.
Payment: This tour has to be paid by direct transfer at least one week before the Event takes place.
Departure point: If you book our chauffeur service, pick up and drop off in your accomodation in Barcelona area. Otherwise, the tour will start in Terrassa and end in Colònia Güell (we will tell you the timing after booking).
Please note:
- The tours is private so there are not any other people in the group only those you travel with. Our tours are not just about sightseeing, they are a unique experience of meeting, learning, discovering and understanding local cultures and returning back home richer than when the journey started
- Our tour will take place, rain or shine
- To book this tour please click on the calendar on the right
- Transfer from/to Airport optional at extra-fee
Cancellation Policy
Cancellations more then a week in advance only administration costs of 15%
Cancellation between a week and 48 hours prior to departure date: 50% of the total amount
Cancellation less than 48 hours prior to departure date : 100% of the total amount
No show: no restitution