Casa Vicens opens its garden for Santa Rita with charity roses in Gràcia

The day will begin at 9:00 with the sale of roses. All proceeds will go to +Tu Fundació, a local organisation that supports adults with intellectual disabilities or who are ageing. It is a simple, local-scale event, but one of those gestures that means such a heavily visited building still maintains a connection with the people who live around it.

Between 11:15 and 13:00, the garden can be visited free of charge in limited slots. The traditional blessing of the roses will also take place there, a custom many local residents still associate with the house’s more intimate history and with the former devotion to Santa Rita at this point in Gràcia.

The connection goes back a long way. Before Gaudí built Casa Vicens, the land had been linked to the Carmelitas Descalzos de Josepets, who used it as a convalescent home. The swift recovery of some patients meant the place became associated with Santa Rita. In 1927, a chapel was built over an 18th-century fountain, although it was demolished in 1963.

The tradition nevertheless survived thanks to the Herrero-Jover family, who kept up the custom of opening the garden every 22 May. Since 2017, now as a house museum, Casa Vicens has recovered that celebration and adapted it to the present with charitable activities and cultural offerings.

This year, the Dandelion studio will intervene in the tribune fountain with a floral installation of red roses and plant elements. The idea is to engage with Gaudí’s ornamental universe without turning it into a literal recreation: an ephemeral piece, intended to last only for the day and alter the way this corner of the garden is seen.

Casa Vicens usually appears on tourist maps as Gaudí’s first major project. But on days such as Santa Rita it is also understood as something closer: a neighbourhood house, with its own memory, where roses, solidarity and architecture meet for a few hours without much fuss.