On March 12, 1898, the industrialist chocolatier Antoni Amatller Costa purchased a 1,415 square-meter house at number 41 on Barcelona’s glorious Paseo de Gracia. Soon after the sale, he hired Josep Puig i Cadafalch (1867-1956) to remodel the building and prepare it for residential use. The architect gave the building a thorough overhaul and radical transformation. The façade was demolished and rebuilt in full, a photography studio was added to the roof; and the main floor (including its grand staircase) was exhaustively remodeled and redecorated.

This thorough, painstaking process ultimately resulted in one of the finest examples of Barcelona’s Modernist architecture. The building presently sits beside Gaudí’s Casa Batlló and Casa Lleó i Morera, the work of Domènech i Montaner. The proximity of the structures by these three artists of world renown has given the area the unofficial nickname “The Block of Discord,” and it’s by far one of the city’s finest and most visually intriguing spots.