Gaudí's Architecture Trivia Quiz

Answer: Huge numbers of tiles

Vicens was a wealthy brick and tile manufacturer - but not wealthy enough, as this house nearly bankrupted him! Gaudí designed him a richly decorated house, externally in a Moorish style and internally with different schemes and motifs in each room.

Answer: Catalonia

The Güell Palace is in a fantastical fusion of art nouveau and neo-gothic styles. Externally, it is has an imposing but monochrome castellated façade, but inside and on the roof, Gaudí's imagination ran wild. The central hall features a grand organ, and Gaudí even designed the elegant but uncomfortable furniture.

Answer: Religious Order

Gaudí's first religious building also housed a small school, run by the order of Saint Teresa of Avila. The building is a further development of the unique neo-gothic style Gaudí was making his own.

Answer: Flying buttresses

The Colony was intended to house workers from Güell's textile factory. Gaudí believed that buildings should support themselves, without the 'crutches' of flying butresses. Although the church was never completed, the many-columned crypt demonstrates vividly the developing style Gaudí was to use at the Sagrada Familia, with its parabolic arches and leaning pillars.

Answer: Castle keep

Bellesguard (literally, 'beautiful view') is on the site of a fourteenth-century royal manor house, and it is probably this which inspired the castellated bulk of the surprisingly graceful building.

Answer: Yes

The park was inspired by the Garden City movement, and Güell hoped it would contain sixty dwellings, but it proved unpopular a was later bought by the city of Barcelona without housing. Gaudí designed some great buildings for the development, including the classically-inspired main entrance, and a porter's lodge with a spotted white tower.

Answer: Serpentine

Gaudí aimed to work with the natural contours of the land in the park, and as a result, created stunning elevated walkways and covered paths. The benches extended this philosophy, by responding to the natural curves of the human body. Their wave-like form encourages close groupings in the concave sections - a great and original idea.

Answer: Broken glass

This is surely Gaudí's greatest Art Nouveau work. The hugely inventive façade also uses carved stone and circular ceramic plates, whilst the roof resembles a fabulous multi-coloured dragon, and the interior is a celebration of blue tiles, some textured, boldest in the lightest areas and lightest in the darkest.

Answer: The Quarry

The rough-hewn stone façade of the Casa Milá resembles concrete, or even sand in its gently curving form. Each of the wrought iron balconies is different, their complex interlaced elements something like a work by Giger. The chimneys of the building are also beautiful and massive structures, creating a whole landscape on the building's roof.

Answer: East

The East, or Nativity, Transept - indeed, most of the basilica - is of almost indescribable, organic complexity. The West, or Passion, Transept is shockingly bare, to symbolise pain and desolation. Much of the church remains to be built: some estimates reckon it will take another five hundred years to complete, yet it is already a justifiably world-famous monument to which visitors flock.

The basilica is Gaudí's great legacy, and the logical climax of his career.