Casa Batlló

This building masterpiece, along the famed city block Illa de la Discòrdia, was designed in 1904 by Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí. The architecture has a visceral, skeletal organic quality with few straight lines, and much of the façade is decorated with a colorful mosaic made of broken ceramic tiles. The arched roof is likened to the back of a dragon or dinosaur, and there is speculation that the rounded feature on the roof represents the lance of Saint George which has been plunged into the back of the dragon.