Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Reus
Fourteen kilometres northwest of Tarragona, and 100km southwest of Barcelona, the small
city of
Reus
was the birthplace in 1852 of architect Antoni Gaudí. There was little in his
early life in Reus to indicate what was to come. He was born to a humble family of boiler-
makers and coppersmiths, and left for Barcelona when he was 16 years old. Consequently,
therearenoGaudíbuildingsinReusitself,butthereisafascinatinginterpretativecentreded-
icatedtothecity'smostfamousson.TheGaudíCentreitselfformspartofthecity's
Rutadel
Modernisme
, a marked trail around the many buildings and mansions erected in the
mod-
ernista
style at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth. This was a
periodwhenReuswasCatalunya'ssecondcity(afterBarcelona),withamerchantclassmade
wealthy by the trade in wine and olive oil and, later, textiles, fabrics and ceramics. You can
easily see all of Reus's sights in a day out from Barcelona - a charming city of 100,000, it's
full of pretty squares, good restaurants and handsome pedestrianized shopping streets, with
almost everything of note lying within a clearly defined circuit of boulevards.
Gaudí Centre
Pl.delMercadal 3•Mon-Sat10am-2pm&4-7pm(mid-Junetomid-Sept 10am-8pm),Sun&hols11am-2pm
• €7, under-14s €4, under-7s free • 977 010 670,
gaudicentre.com
The
Gaudí Centre
is a gleaming box of a building that throws much light on the inspiration
behind Gaudí's work. It's not really a museum as such, though there are exhibits including
his former school reports, his only surviving manuscript notebook and a reproduction of the
architect's study-workshop at the Sagrada Família. Instead, the centre cleverly investigates
the architectural techniques pioneered by Gaudí, with hands-on demonstration models and
audiovisual aids that show, for example, how he created wave roofs and spiral towers. If you
