Antoni Gaudí i Cornet was born on 25 June 1852 and baptised the following day at the church of Sant Pere in Reus, the city where he spent his childhood. He was the son of a coppersmith from Riudoms, from whom he learned the trade, and from 1860 to 1869 he studied at the Escolapian School in Reus, where he distinguished himself in geometry and arithmetic and received a traditional religious and humanistic education. As a boy he suffered from an illness that forced him to spend long periods resting at the family home in Riudoms. He took advantage of the opportunity to observe nature, which was to be a reference point throughout his life. At that time he did a number of drawings to illustrate the manuscript magazine El Arlequín, which published ten issues of twelve copies each. In 1869 Antoni Gaudí moved to Barcelona and enrolled as a free student at the Middle School to follow the elements of physics and natural history courses. He went on to the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Barcelona and, from 1873, prepared the entrance exam for the Barcelona Province School of Architecture, at the Llotja in Barcelona, where he obtained the official architect's diploma in 1878.