a project to design an altarpiece in 1883 for the church of San Feliu in Alella, commissioned by the parish priest Jaume Puig Claret, but the project was never completed. A drawing in India ink on fabric paper is preserved, at a scale of 1:25. At the time, the town of Gràcia was its own entity and independent from Barcelona. Its population centre was built around the Carmelite convent of Santa Maria de Gràcia – popularly known as els Josepets – which was founded in 1630. It was an agricultural area, populated with farmhouses, which at the beginning of the 19th century began to urbanise and an incipient industrial framework emerged. The town was added to Barcelona in 1897 along with five other neighbouring towns: Sants, Les Corts, Sant Gervasi de Cassoles, Sant Andreu de Palomar and Sant Martí de Provençals. At that time, many bourgeoisie families had their second homes in Gràcia, since it was close to the city yet had the tranquillity of a town. The house is located on a street named Carrer de les Carolines, in honour of the Caroline Islands – an old Spanish colony – in 1908; it was previously called Sant Gervasi. The original plot was situated between the convent of the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, who shared a dividing wall with one side of the building (the northeast side), and a narrow street with a dead end, called Carreró Racó de Sant Gervasi, which later disappeared. This land came from three different sites acquired between 1846 and 1854 by Agustí Maria Baró i Tastàs, which included several ground floor buildings. In 1866 it was inherited by the mother of Manuel Vicens, Rosa Montaner i Matas, widow of Onofre Vicens i Domènech. She died in 1877 and it passed to Manuel Vicens. It is unknown whether the buildings on the site were demolished or used in part in Gaudí’s project. In 1876 and 1881, Vicens bought two plots adjacent to Carreró Racó de Sant Gervasi, which allowed the property’s garden to be extended. Gaudí completed the project for the house and garden in 1880, although the plans were not signed until 1883, when they were presented to the Gràcia Town Council. Its design combined a relatively simple architectural structure with the complexity of its meticulous decoration, especially in terms of the use of ceramic tiles. Stylistically, it belongs entirely