photo #5819301

The Casa Burés, dating from 1905, is in a class of its own. Like many landmarks in Barcelona’s Eixample district, it was commissioned by a wealthy merchant at the height of the region’s textile boom. The architect was Francesc Berenguer i Mestres, reportedly a close friend and collaborator of the style’s best-known protagonist Gaudí. Berenguer i Mestres considered himself as much a decorator as an architect, and expressed the movement’s love of nature, romance, and whimsy on every available surface, through tiles, sculpture, stained glass, vivid polychrome treatments, and countless other variants of bling.