Finca Guell by Antonio Gaudi and the portal mitique 
A luxurious home for horses and plows
La Finca Güell , Antonio Gaudi spectacular building designed for the wealthy businessman and patron of the arts as a shelter for horses and plows.
La Finca Güell on Avinguda de Pedralbes. the foreground, the flag housed the keeper's house, the armory and stables.
Where now the big emerging university district of Barcelona, at the end of the long Avingunda Diagonal, in the distance stretched the 1884 campaign Pedralbes and Les Corts Sarrià, Barcelona where the rich owned properties and farms, mainly for the horses to pull, to equirements, to rides and car plows.
One of the most important men of the city, Eusebi Güell, a wealthy businessman and philanthropist educated and liberal commissioned Gaudi to this building to house these units .
The ride closed at the height of a dome skylight adorned with tiles colors.
The project led to two of Gaudi houses whose architecture was heavily influenced by construction techniques Arab constant characteristics of his early work.
One was devoted to the stables and riding school, a building with parabolic arches and a brick vault. The other was the keeper's house.
Entry chaired a spectacular wrought iron gate, representing the mythical dragon, symbols of the custodian of the property is between two pavilions, arranged at an angle, which contain precisely keeper's house, and left the stables for 14 horses and riding hall with a dome.
The stables are covered by brick vaults supported by eight parabolic arcs in memory pointed arches di Middle Ages, which permitted outside wheel path and within opening 14 small trapezoidal windows to illuminate and ventilate the environment.
North of the barn, next to the door pillar, there is a small vestibule with a narrow staircase leading to the barn and on the terrace.
The southern edge of the equestrian center, a local plant covered by a square cupola. Atop the dome, a lantern gives light and ventilation room whose floor is made of bricks placed concentric circles ending in a circular stone decorated with a big G, useful for water drainage.
As in all works of Gaudi in the Finca Güell many symbolic references can be identified.
However, neither Gaudí, Güell nor their descendants have never explained the symbolism contained in the gardens and buildings of this property b lthough the presence of elements such as the dragon, orange, in top of the pillar that supports the door, no doubt recall the myth of Hercules and oranges from the garden of Esperdi.
In 1969, the Finca Güell was declared historical and artistic heritage of UNESCO and is now the present site of the Royal Gaudí Chair, belonging to the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, and in the field that the lies around the Botanical Garden of the Faculty of Biology.
