It is not yet ten in the morning and about twenty people are waiting at the corner of Paseo de Gràcia and Consell de Cent, in front of the Lleó Morera house, the work of Domènech i Montaner, one of the protagonist architects of this weekend . A volunteer – there are 800 mobilized throughout Barcelona and six other locations – distributes stickers to identify visitors. The 14th edition of the 48 H Open House has just begun, a proposal designed to explain and bring architecture closer to citizens who are not necessarily experts and which serves to open the doors of more than 200 houses and dwellings, many of which are normally closed to the public.
"Domènech i Montaner hired more than 40 artisans, there are relief and wood details by Gaspar Homar, sculptural elements by Eusebi Arnau...", explains Laia Vidal, archivist by profession and guide for the past three years only for the Open House weekend. The polychrome stained glass floods the colorful room, the hydraulic tiles were designed by Domènech i Montaner himself and the mosaics are by Lluís Bru. A gem and one of the ten works by this architect with a Renaissance spirit, whose death this year marks the centenary of his death, included in this edition of the Open House.
To enter the Lleó Morera house you have to register and visitors arrive in stages. There are no tourists. The tourists are a few meters further on, in front of the Batlló i Ametller house. Here, the vast majority are from Barcelona, like Pere Comeche, an Open House fan who has walked through all the editions and who won the photography competition last year, with an image of him playing with the Mapfre tower and the Arts hotel.
The festival does not discriminate. From modernist architecture to the most current, such as the Passivhaus housing in Poblenou. "We promote the city of fifteen minutes and our goal is that people can do a tour and three or four visits in the same area, starting with their neighborhood," explains Elisenda Bonet, the director of a festival that promotes and organizes a association, 48H Open House Barcelona, non-profit. This year you can visit 140 houses and flats - always free of charge - distributed throughout all the districts. If yesterday the offer was more numerous in Poblenou, the axis of Diagonal and the Sants area; today Sunday there are more visits to Ciutat Vella, Montjuïc, Gràcia or Guinardó. "We want to spread the word about architecture and what it implies, how it plays with space, with light... we want to explain to citizens those houses that they have passed thousands of times before," he adds.
Yesterday in the queue to enter the Castle of the Three Dragons there were a handful of nostalgic people. The building with the air of a castle that the protagonist architect of the festival designed as a cafe restaurant for the Barcelona Universal Exhibition of 1888, was one of the proposals that aroused the most interest. Many had entered the building when it was still the Museum of Zoology, of which vestiges still remain. Barcelona was the seventh city to join the Open House network, which began in London Victoria Thorton and is currently held in 51 cities around the world.
