We’re spending three months in Barcelona! It’s a dream come true. If you’re interested in our trip, you can find our archive of Barcelona posts here.
Casa Batllo
Casa Botlla is one of Gaudi’s most famous creations in Barcelona. It’s a beautiful house full of colorful mosaics, swooping curves, and fine details. Come along as we take a walk through the house.
Casa Batllo Tickets
You can purchase timed tickets only directly from the Casa Botlla website. This is what we did. If you plan on visiting multiple sites in Barcelona, there may be more affordable combination tickets available, but we did not explore those options.
There are three levels of tickets, blue, silver, and gold. Blue is the basic tour of the house with audio guide. Silver gives you interactive ipads and a couple of additional rooms. Gold gives you the silver level details plus access to the private living quarters of the Batllos.
Good news if traveling with kids: anyone under 12 is free! You still have to reserve tickets for them, but there’s no entry free, and they get access to the same ticket “level” as the adult that they’re with. Knowing that, I chose the silver level for our visit so that the boys would be able to try out the ipads.
The Ipads are cool because as you’re listening to the audio tour, you can hold the Ipads up to features in the rooms and they “come alive” to illustrate some of the inspiration behind Guadi’s designs. In the photo above, you can see the sea turtles that inspired the skylights, and they appear whenever you have the Ipad face those windows!
Self-Guided Tour
The tours are completely self-guided, which I really like. You’re able to go at your own pace and really enjoy the spaces.
That said, some areas are more spacious than others. It was hard to slow down in the stairwells and take in those details when there were people waiting behind you. BUT you could take it nice and slow in some of the larger rooms and patios.
The tour takes you from the first floor up to the rooftop terrace. On the terrace you can take in the view, and the amazing mosaic details shown in photos of the house. There’s also a small stand where you can buy drink refreshments.
Visiting Casa Batllo with Kids
My kids, ages 8 and 10, loved our visit, but I think that there were a few things that we did ahead of time that helped to spur their interest.
Gaudi’s designs are amazing, and they are heavily inspired by nature. My boys love the natural world, and so I wanted to foster this connection. I purposefully chose Casa Batllo as our first Gaudi stop because of the balconies that look like skulls. I knew that my bone-collectors would get a kick out of that!
I showed them a couple of short YouTube documentaries about Gaudi. They loved this one and this one (in Spanish). We also picked up a box of Casa Batllo postcards with black and white fronts for the kids to color. After visiting, their excitement for both Casa Batllo and Gaudi has continued as they’ve colored the postcards and drafted their own Gaudi-inspired treehouse designs.
