Antoni Gaudi's kind of the golden maniac of Barcelona --- he's equal parts hometown hero and mad scientist to the Spanish, and his architecture is hugely celebrated in the city. We spent a morning visiting Sagrada Familia, the massive church that became his passion project. It's got an unbelievable story behind it. Construction on the church started in 1882. It's still not finished.
Gaudi was run over by a tram in June 1926 and killed. Fortunately, his proteges and collaborators continued work on Sagrada Familia --- that was, up until Gaudi's drafts and blueprints were destroyed by anarchists during the Spanish Civil War in 1938. So nobody really knows how Gaudi intended for the Sagrada Familia to be finished.
Completion is projected for 2026 --- 144 years after the first bricks were laid. But even this is a disputed date!
The entire thing is just astounding. To see the brute strength and literal years of labor it takes to make something so grand and so sacred makes your jaw hang open. After seeing St. Peter's in the Vatican, I was even more impressed. The whole of Sagrada Familia looks as if someone hauled up an old shipwreck after letting it mold for years under the sea. You wouldn't be surprised to see little crabs scuttling out of corners, barnacles on the foreheads of the sculptures.
2 comments:
Monica--I left you two comments on this entry, but neither has showed up. Sorry!
Basically: what a cathedral! Without the photos, I could not have imagined its texture--thanks for providing this view for us!
Mama
144 years is in the range cathedral-building took in the Middle Ages, isn't it? And then there are the ones like Cologne that were left unfinished till the 19th Century. How much of the Duomo in Florence was done then? Certainly the marble facing was, hence the Italian national colors.
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