You are in front of the unfinished masterpiece by the man who is perhaps the greatest architect of the 20th century, Antoni Gaudí. This temple dedicated to the Holy Family was supposed to be just one of many parish churches that was part of the city's planned growth. Just think that at the time of its foundation, it was even outside the territory of the municipality.
The architect began to work on the church starting in 1883, transforming it into a perpetual construction site and proposing incredibly exceptional architectural and decorative solutions. And it is still an ongoing adventure: who knows how many more years or decades must pass before you'll be able to listen to the chorus of 1500 singers envisaged by Gaudí for the inauguration.
Every year the huge building welcomes more than three million visitors, with long lines at the entrance, and some visitors periodically return to Barcelona to follow the work's slow but steady progress.
But let me tell you the amazing story of the Sagrada Familia. The architect of the Diocese of Barcelona, where Gaudí began his career as a drafter, wanted to create a large Neo-Gothic church: it was ambitious but also somewhat academic, just like dozens of sacred buildings that had popped up in new neighborhoods in all the European cities in those years. One year after the start of construction the crypt was already well under way, when the then 31-year-old Gaudí took over the work site's direction. At that point the project radically changed. Villar's banal crypt, which Gaudí barely managed to resist completely destroying and redoing from scratch, became the genius' laboratory. The architect was brimming with symbolism, fantasy, and mysticism: he wanted to create a church that grew "by itself", animated by the prayers and dreams of the entire community of faithful.
FUN FACT: the Passion façade with its thin and tormented characters is also very interesting for its magic square: all the numbers, added line by line, column, and diagonal, always give the sum of 33: the age of Christ at his death.
Language: English