Park Güell

I sit high on a sunny hill, looking over the busy city of Barcelona. I am a garden, but my flowers are made of sparkling tiles and my trees are made of stone. I don't have any straight lines. Instead, I curve and wiggle like a happy snake moving through the grass. My long benches are covered in a rainbow of broken tile pieces that glitter in the sun, making them look like they were decorated with jewels. My rooftops look like they came from a fairytale, like gingerbread houses topped with colorful candy. When people visit, they say it feels like they’ve stepped into a magical dream. They walk along my winding paths and under my stone tree trunks, feeling full of wonder. I am Park Güell, a special place built from nature and a big imagination.

I was born from the mind of a brilliant man named Antoni Gaudí. He was an architect, which is a person who designs buildings. Around the year 1900, his good friend, Eusebi Güell, had an idea. He asked Gaudí to create a special neighborhood for families, a city-garden where buildings and nature could play together. Gaudí loved this idea. He didn't want me to look like any other place in the world. He designed my columns to look like tall, strong trees holding up the sky. He built winding paths that feel like a secret adventure. He also created my friendly lizard statue, El Drac, and covered him in shiny mosaic tiles. Gaudí used a special technique called 'trencadís,' which means he used broken bits of ceramic to give me my beautiful, sparkling skin. For fourteen years, from 1900 until 1914, workers carefully pieced me together, tile by tile, stone by stone.

The original dream of a private neighborhood didn't quite work out as planned, but something even better happened. In the year 1926, I opened my gates to everyone and became a public park. Now, I belong to the whole world. Children laugh and play on my grand stairways, and families from all over come to sit on my long, wavy bench to look out over the beautiful city. They take pictures with my famous lizard and marvel at my gingerbread houses. I am a happy reminder that even a dream that changes can become something wonderful for everyone to share. I show people that art can be playful and fun, and that our world is more beautiful when we let our imaginations run wild, just like my curvy, colorful paths.