Casa Batlló: Masked Balconies

To stay in Barcelona without visiting Casa Batlló is like being in Paris and forget about the Eiffel tower, with all due respect to Sagrada Familia and Sacre Coeur respectively. The famous house designed by Gaudi is so, let's say, 'different' that tiptoeing her is almost a sacrilege. Besides the exquisite trencadis (shattered tiles) on the façade, the balconies are like carnival masks, concealed faces watching upon passersby. The whole building has more to do with patterns we usually find in nature than with man's rationale, like the peculiar contours of the roof that simulate some sort of scaly skin as that of a lizard or a snake, or why not, a dragon, or the impossible arches and oval windows in the lower floors deprived of everything that recalls a straight line. I tried to apply some symmetry at the moment of framing the picture but it was certainly pretty hard. Here is another image I took a long time ago right next to the building wall to make it look more dramatic and a small post.