Sagrada Família

Gaudí devoted forty years to the Church of the Holy Family and knew he would never see it finished. The towers look like sandcastles or termite mounds, and inside the columns branch like trees. The church was consecrated in 2010 but is still being built.

The church was begun in 1882 in Gothic Revival style to designs by the architect Francisco de Paula del Villar. The following year the young Antoni Gaudí took over and completely changed the plans. From 1914 he worked almost exclusively on the church and spent his last months living in the workshop. When he was hit by a tram and died in 1926, only part of the church was finished, including the crypt and the Nativity façade. The building is funded entirely by donations and ticket sales, which is one reason why it has taken so long.

Gaudí planned the church as a Latin cross with five aisles and three façades: the Nativity, the Passion and the Glory. Eighteen towers were to symbolise the apostles, the evangelists, Mary and Jesus, and the tallest, the tower of Jesus, is planned to reach about 172 metres. He worked with models of strings and weights hung upside down to find arch forms that carry themselves. Inside, the columns lean and divide into branches, so that the roof becomes like a forest canopy. The light is filtered through stained glass that colours the space.

During the Spanish Civil War in 1936 anarchists broke into the workshop, burned many of Gaudí’s drawings and smashed the models. His successors have had to reconstruct his ideas from fragments, photographs and his writings. Pope Benedict XVI consecrated the church as a basilica in 2010. Work has since continued on the tall central towers. The church is one of the most visited buildings in Spain and since 2005 has been part of the Gaudí World Heritage Site, with the Nativity façade and the crypt.