Basic information:
Location:     Carrer Nou de la Rambla, 3       Barcelona.
Qualification:  xxxxx  (5 on 5)
Present condition:  Outside Good / Inside. The Palace is now in restoration process. Consequently only the ground floor and the basement are opened to visit.
How to go to: Metro: L3, (underground station Liceu)
                      Buses: 14, 59, 91, 120
Visits:  The Palace is in restoration process. From 1 June 2010 until April 2011, it will be closed. 
Visits, timings, prices and other information can vary, please verify it previously.
Handicapped accessibility: Visits are not possible during the restauration process.
Information:  Phone: (34) 93 317 39 74 and (34) 93 317 39 78.
                     Fax: (34) 93 317 37 79
                     Email: palauguell@diba.cat
                     Web: www.palauguell.cat
Ruta del Modernisme

History:
This building, one of the most luxurious of Barcelona, was commissioned by Eusebi Güell i Bacigalupi (Count of Güell, textile industrialist and marquis's of Comillas son-in-law -see right portrait-) to Antoni Gaudí i Cornet who started the project around 1880 and signed it in 1886.  
This palace that gets up close to the Ramblas, in an area  that in this period was the center of Barcelona, it is a house among other buildings and placed with a side leaned against another house also property of the Güell family.
The construction was developed between 1886 and 1888, date mentioned on the high part of the facade, although the decoration would not finish until 1889.  
The family Güell lived in this house from 1888, some of the receptions and other protocol activities of the 1888 Universal Exhibition in Barcelona, taking place in its living rooms. 
The palace was the Güell residence, although the center of the city has left transferring during these years to the Passeig de Gracia and the new urban areas, until in 1910 the count abandons the building to live in a house he acquired inside the enclosure of the Park Güell in the high part of Barcelona, project that Gaudí also carried out for him at that time. 
From that moment, the palace was inhabited by the count's daughter Mercé Güell up to 1945 in which the palace was sold to the Diputació de Barcelona (Provincial government of Barcelona). That institution installed in it, the Museum of Scenic Art. 
Between 1974 and 1976, this institution carried out some changes in the building, restoring the first plant, to allow its opening to the public. 
The last general restoration of the building, directed by Antoni González Moreno begins in 1983 and it concludes in 1997. This restoration includes a reinterpretation, in charge of diverse artists, of the chimneys and vents of the roof, where only one chimney is conserved with the original trencadis of Gaudí. 
The Palau Güell was declared by the UNESCO a Human Heritage in the year 1986.