Spain: La Sagrada Família

If you have time for only one sightseeing outing, this should be it. Gaudí’s unparalleled, Unesco-listed La Sagrada Família inspires awe by its sheer verticality, and in the manner of the medieval cathedrals it emulates, it’s still under construction. Work began in 1882 and is hoped (perhaps optimistically) to be completed in 2026, a century after the architect’s death. Unfinished it may be, but the cathedral attracts more than 4.5 million visitors a year and is the most visited monument in Spain.

Pope Benedict XVI consecrated the church as a minor basilica in a huge ceremony in November 2010.

The Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família (Expiatory Temple of the Holy Family) was Antoni Gaudí’s all-consuming obsession. Given the commission by a conservative society that wished to build a temple as atonement for the city’s sins of modernity, Gaudí saw its completion as his holy mission. As funds dried up, he contributed his own, and in the last years of his life he was never shy of pleading with anyone he thought a likely donor. In all, he spent 43 years on La Sagrada Família.

Gaudí devised a temple 95m long and 60m wide, able to seat over 13,000 people, with a central tower 170m high above the transept (representing Christ) and another 17 of 100m or more. The 12 along the three facades represent the Apostles, while the remaining five represent the Virgin Mary and the four evangelists. With his characteristic dislike for straight lines (there were none in nature, he said), Gaudí gave his towers swelling outlines inspired by the unusual peaks of the holy mountain Montserrat outside Barcelona, and encrusted them with a tangle of sculpture that seems an outgrowth of the stone.

At Gaudí’s death, only the crypt, the apse walls, one portal and one tower had been finished. Three more towers were added by 1930, completing the northeast (Nativity) facade. In 1936 anarchists burned and smashed the interior, including workshops and many of Gaudí’s original plans and models. Work began again in 1952, but controversy has always clouded progress. Opponents of the continuation of the project claim that the computer models based on what little of Gaudí’s plans survived the anarchists’ ire have led to the creation of a monster that has little to do with Gaudí’s plans and style. It is a debate that appears to have little hope of resolution, spurred on by the idea that Gaudí often changed and adapted his projects as they went along. Love or hate what is being done, the fascination the building awakens is undeniable.

Even before reaching completion, some of the oldest parts of the church, especially the apse, have required restoration work.

Inside, work on roofing over the church was completed in 2010. The roof is held up by a forest of innovative, extraordinary angled pillars. As the pillars soar towards the ceiling, they sprout a web of supporting branches, creating the effect of a forest canopy. The tree image is in no way fortuitous – Gaudí envisaged such an effect. Everything was thought through, including the shape and placement of windows to create the mottled effect one would see with sunlight pouring through the branches of a thick forest. The pillars are of four different types of stone. They vary in colour and load-bearing strength, from the soft Montjuïc stone pillars along the lateral aisles through to granite, dark grey basalt and finally burgundy-tinged Iranian porphyry for the key columns at the intersection of the nave and transept. The stained glass, divided in shades of red, blue, green, yellow and ochre, creates a hypnotic, magical atmosphere when the sun hits the windows. Tribunes built high above the aisles can host two choirs: the main tribune up to 1300 people and the children’s tribune up to 300.

The northeastern Nativity Facade (Façana del Naixement) is the artistic pinnacle of the building, mostly created under Gaudí’s personal supervision. With prior booking (adult/child €33/free), you can climb high up inside some of the four towers by a combination of lifts and narrow spiral staircases – a vertiginous experience. (Climbing the stairs is not recommended if you are pregnant or have cardiac or respiratory problems.) The towers are destined to hold tubular bells capable of playing complex music at great volume. Their upper parts are decorated with mosaics spelling out ‘Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Hosanna in Excelsis, Amen, Alleluia’. Asked why he lavished so much care on the tops of the spires, which no one would see from close up, Gaudí answered: ‘The angels will see them.’

Three sections of the portal represent, from left to right, Hope, Charity and Faith. Among the forest of sculpture on the Charity portal you can see, low down, the manger surrounded by an ox, an ass, the shepherds and kings, and angel musicians. Some 30 different species of plant from around Catalonia are reproduced here, and the faces of the many figures are taken from plaster casts done of local people and the occasional one made from corpses in the local morgue.

Directly above the blue stained-glass window is the archangel Gabriel’s Annunciation to Mary. At the top is a green cypress tree, a refuge in a storm for the white doves of peace dotted over it. The mosaic work at the pinnacle of the towers is made from Murano glass from Venice.

To the right of the facade is the curious Claustre del Roser, a Gothic-style mini-cloister tacked on to the outside of the church (rather than the classic square enclosure of the great Gothic church monasteries). Its 1897-completed portal is considered a guide by Gaudí to future builders. Once inside, look back to the intricately decorated entrance. On the lower right-hand side you’ll notice the sculpture of a reptilian devil offering a worker a bomb. Barcelona was regularly rocked by political violence, and bombings were frequent in the decades prior to the civil war. The sculpture is one of several on the ‘temptations of men and women’.

The southwest Passion Facade (Façana de la Passió), on the theme of Christ’s last days and death, was built between 1954 and 1978 based on surviving drawings by Gaudí, with four towers and a large, sculpture-bedecked portal – but was only officially completed in 2018. The late sculptor Josep Maria Subirachs (1927–2014) worked on its decoration from 1986 to 2006. He did not attempt to imitate Gaudí, instead producing angular, controversial images of his own. The main series of sculptures, on three levels, are in an S-shaped sequence, starting with the Last Supper at the bottom left, passing Christ crucified in the top centre, and ending with Christ’s burial at the top right. With prior booking (adult/child €33/free) you can travel up inside one of the Passion Facade’s towers.

Immediately in front of the Passion Facade, the Schools of Gaudí (Escoles de Gaudí) make up one of the architect’s simpler gems. Gaudí built this as a children’s school in 1909, creating an original, undulating roof of brick that continues to charm architects to this day (and brings to mind Gaudí’s masterpiece La Pedrera).

The Glory Facade (Façana de la Glòria) will, like the others, be crowned by four towers – the total of 12 representing the Twelve Apostles. Gaudí wanted it to be the most magnificent facade of the church. Inside will be the narthex, a kind of foyer made up of 16 ‘lanterns’, a series of hyperboloid forms topped by cones. Further decoration will make the whole building a microcosmic symbol of the Christian church, with Christ represented by a massive 170m central tower above the transept, and the five remaining towers under construction symbolising the Virgin Mary and the four evangelists.

Open at the same times as the church, the Museu Gaudí, below ground level next to the Passion Facade, meanders through interesting material on Gaudí’s life and other works, as well as a re-creation of his modest office as it was when he died, and explanations of the geometric patterns and plans at the heart of his building techniques. You can see a good example of his plumb-line models that showed him the stresses and strains he could get away with in construction. A side hall towards the eastern end of the museum leads to a window above the simple crypt in which the genius is buried.

The neo-Gothic crypt, where Masses are now held, can only be accessed from Carrer de Sardenya; it’s the oldest part of the entire structure and largely the work of Gaudí’s predecessor Francisco de Paula del Villar y Lozano.

Although essentially a building site, the completed sections and museum may be explored at leisure. Guided 50-minute tours (adult/child €27/free) run in various languages; alternatively, book tickets with audio guides (€26/free). Enter from Carrer de la Marina. There are also tickets that include an audio guide and a trip (by lift and stairs) inside the towers on either the Nativity or Passion facades; these tower tours (€33/free) must be pre-booked online. It’s best to pre-book all tickets online.

Hats, see-through clothing, low necklines and exposed backs/midriffs aren’t permitted. Shorts and skirts must be at least mid-thigh; tops must cover shoulders.