Mosaics

Barcelona is a city built on the backs of broken things. You see it everywhere—the shimmering, jagged skin of the Sagrada Família, the serpentine benches of Park Güell, the kaleidoscopic chimneys of Casa Batlló. They call it trencadís. To the average tourist, it’s just a pretty background for a selfie. But if you want to understand the sweat, the obsession, and the literal blood that goes into those shards, you have to leave the Gothic Quarter behind and head to Les Corts. Specifically, you head to Carrer de Breda, 10. This isn't a museum with velvet ropes and hushed whispers. This is Mosaics Livia, the working studio of Livia Garreta, and it smells like wet stone and hard work.

Walking into this space is a sensory slap in the face. There is no gift shop selling mass-produced coasters. Instead, you find shelves groaning under the weight of ceramic fragments, glass, and marble. There are hammers that have seen decades of use and the fine, persistent dust of pulverized tile that seems to coat every surface. This is one of the few places left where the best mosaic Barcelona has to offer isn't just on display—it’s being born. Livia Garreta isn't just an instructor; she’s a master of a craft that the modern world is constantly trying to automate or cheapen. She’s spent her life restoring the very heritage that people fly across oceans to see, and here, she lets you into that world.

If you’re looking for a passive experience, stay on the tour bus. A trencadís class Barcelona style at Mosaics Livia is a physical undertaking. You aren't just gluing bits of tile onto a board like a kindergarten project. You are learning the geometry of destruction. You learn how to strike a tile so it breaks exactly how you want it to—or, more often, how to adapt your vision to the way the material chooses to shatter. It’s a lesson in humility and improvisation. You’ll spend hours hunched over a workbench, your fingers getting stained and your eyes straining to find the perfect fit for a jagged piece of cobalt blue glass. It is deeply satisfying in a way that looking at a monument through a camera lens never can be.

The neighborhood of Les Corts provides the perfect backdrop for this kind of honesty. It’s a residential, middle-class barrio that doesn't feel the need to perform for outsiders. It’s the kind of place where people actually live, shop for groceries, and argue over coffee. Being tucked away here makes the studio feel like a sanctuary of genuine culture. When you’re inside, the roar of the city fades away, replaced by the rhythmic 'tink-tink-tink' of hammers on ceramic. It’s a meditative, almost monastic atmosphere, punctuated by Livia’s expert guidance. She doesn't sugarcoat it; if your composition is lazy, she’ll tell you. She respects the craft too much to let you do a half-assed job.

Is Mosaics Livia worth it? That depends on what you value. If you want a quick checkmark on a list of things to do in Barcelona, probably not. But if you want to touch the soul of Catalan Modernism, if you want to feel the weight of the tools that built this city’s aesthetic identity, then it’s essential. You’ll leave with a small piece of art you made yourself, sure, but more importantly, you’ll leave with a permanent shift in perspective. The next time you walk past a Gaudí masterpiece, you won't just see a pretty pattern. You’ll see the thousands of individual decisions, the broken edges, and the human hands that brought order to the chaos. It’s a raw, unfiltered look at the labor behind the legend, and in a city increasingly polished for consumption, that kind of grit is a rare and beautiful thing.