FORTRESS OF REFLECTIONS

Through the grey street, you end up standing in front of a building that looks like it was designed by Gaudí and Hundertwasser while they were madly in love with each other. No straight lines, no right angles: only pieces of coloured glass and tendrils forming the shapes of balconies that sometimes seem to be symmetrical, but you can’t be sure about it because of the organic ornaments: the plants that squeeze themselves through the windows and the cracks of the wall. There is an opening at the bottom of this building, there aren’t any gates so you just walk in and find yourself in an orangery-like place where there are exotic flowers and a shit ton of trash everywhere. In this confusing mixture of beauty and abominations, you notice that the layer of rubbish under your feet is… moving. You bend down to see what’s there and you discover a colony of cockroaches and notice the rats, which from time to time sneak close to the insects from time to time and eat a few of them, then run back to their shelters. These rats are huge. It’s both scary and disgusting so you look around to find a way that leads you elsewhere.

You see a crumbling, concrete spiral staircase made centuries ago and climb up it. The next floor is full of plants and flowers. Really full of plants and flowers; getting through them requires real muscle energy. As you fight with this lovely but annoying vegetable matter you realize there is no other way out of here than the one you’ve entered from. Nevertheless, you discover statues and mirrors on the wall. Busts, torsos and full body replicas of men and women, formless abstract shapes and geometrical installations. You can get a closer look at them if you’d like.