Architect Antoni Gaudí's First Home Will Open As A Museum In 2017

If you're heading to Barcelona later this year, you're in for an architectural treat. Antoni Gaudi's first house, Casa Vicens, will officially be open to the public as a museum in fall of 2017, reported Arch Daily.

In 1883, at the age of 31, acclaimed architect Gaudi built his first home, a summer retreat called Casa Vicens, and with it came new design techniques and the birth of modernism in Barcelona.

The home, located at 24 Carolines Street, set a new standard for its time, as one of the city's first Art Nouveau buildings, with a style of Neo-Mudéjar and hints of orientalist architecture. Originally built as four stories, the ground floor featured a gallery and a waterfall located in a parabolic arch. Gaudi's love of color is also evident throughout.

As time went on, the Jover family, who took ownership of the home in 1899, made significant changes to the property, calling on architect Joan Baptista Serra de Martínez, a friend of Gaudí, to head up the design, according to the Casa Vicens website. The changes included turning the single-family dwelling into three separate homes, and a changing Gaudi's original staircase. The estate doubled in size, and saw two more reconstructions between 1935 and 1964.

In 1993, Casa Vicens became a historical monument, and in 2005 UNESCO declared the home a World Heritage Site. The third family to live in the house then put it on the market for €35m, and MoraBanc purchased it in 2015 (at an undisclosed amount) with the goal of opening it up to the public for visits. The rehabilitation of the house started in 2015, with an opening date as a museum set for 2016.

There might have been a slight delay, but the public (and the art buffs) can begin booking flights to see the historic landmark now.

h/t Arch Daily