Casa Xina (Casa Ferran Guardiola)

Walk down the C/ de Muntaner and you’ll see plenty of what makes Eixample famous: the orderly blocks, the wrought-iron balconies, the polite, bourgeois face of Barcelona. Then you hit the corner of Consell de Cent and everything goes sideways. You’re staring at Casa Xina—officially Casa Ferran Guardiola—and it looks like someone dropped a Viennese palace into a vat of Chinese lacquer and set the whole thing to 'hallucinate.'

Built in 1929 by Joan Francesc Guardiola Martínez for his brother Ferran, this isn't the organic, bone-like Modernisme of Gaudí. This is something else entirely. It’s a collision of styles that shouldn't work but somehow, through sheer architectural bravado, manages to dominate the street. You’ve got the geometric rigors of the Viennese Sezession movement—think clean lines and heavy forms—smashed together with a wild, unapologetic Orientalism. The locals didn't call it the 'Chinese House' because they were being poetic; they called it that because the red and yellow ceramics, the pagoda-like silhouettes, and the sheer garishness of the facade felt like a transmission from a distant, imagined East.

The facade is a riot of detail. Look up and you’ll see columns that look like they belong in a temple, topped with obelisks and strange, winged figures. The ceramic work is the star here—vibrant reds and ochres that catch the Mediterranean sun in a way that makes the surrounding grey stone buildings look like they’re mourning. It was finished just in time for the 1929 International Exposition, a period when Barcelona was desperate to show the world it could be modern, weird, and wealthy all at once. Guardiola Martínez wasn't interested in blending in; he wanted to leave a scar on the neighborhood, a beautiful, confusing mark that people would still be arguing about a century later.

Here’s the reality check: you aren't going inside. This isn't a museum with a gift shop and a tiered ticket price. It’s a residential building. People live here. They cook dinner, they argue about the laundry, and they probably get tired of tourists like us gawking at their windows from the sidewalk. There is no lobby tour, no rooftop bar, no 'immersive experience' with VR goggles. It is a piece of the city’s living skin. You stand on the corner, you dodge the commuters on their scooters, and you look up.

Is it worth the walk? If you’re tired of the same three Gaudí buildings appearing on every postcard, then yes, absolutely. It’s a reminder that Barcelona’s architectural history isn't a monolith. It’s messy, it’s experimental, and sometimes it’s just plain strange. It represents a moment in time when the city was looking outward, grabbing bits of Vienna and Beijing and shoving them into the Eixample grid just to see what would happen. What happened was Casa Xina—a glorious, red-tiled freak of nature that remains one of the most honest expressions of 1920s ego in the city. Don't just snap a photo and leave. Stand there for ten minutes. Watch how the light hits the ceramics. Realize that someone had the guts to build this in a neighborhood that values conformity above almost everything else. That’s the real magic of the place.