Destination: La Sagrada Família
Welcome to Destination: History, where we tackle interesting and fascinating places and take a stroll through the history behind them.
Today’s destination sees us in the centre of Barcelona looking up at a still unfinished building. Standing out in the landscape with its unique architectural features, it’ll be tough to miss this nature inspired destination.
Join me as we take a look at today’s destination: La Sagrada Família.
Building La Sagrada Família
La Sagrada Família is an exceptional example of unique architecture, and even though he wasn’t the first choice for this project, the architect, Antoni Gaudí, has forever been associated with this masterpiece.
As famous as it is for its architect, the Sagrada Família is even more famous for the amount of time it’s taken for it to be built. Construction on the Sagrada Família seems to be a never-ending affair.
It all started back in the days of the late 18th century, as a fundamentalist Catholic Bocabella was of the opinion that the conditions the poor found themselves in was of their own doing and basically a punishment for their sins. Jeez, this guy had some bleak views.
Anyway, he wanted to help these poor sin-ridden people by building a magnificent church that would inspire them into following the correct path, and what other path could there be but the road of religious life.
So troubled by these secularism, liberalism and revolutionary ideologies swimming around in Barcelona at the time, Bocabella set about creating his church which would represent the perfect family. That’s right, what’s more perfect than the Holy Family? Joseph, Mary and Jesus are obviously the ultimate happy family.
In order to do this, Bocabella lost no time in finding his own religious organisation that he named the Spiritual Association of Devotees of Saint Joseph. At least it just runs off the tongue. The Association campaigned for a new church in Barcelona and they eventually raised enough money to buy up some land and hire an architect to oversee the build. Enter Francisco de Paula del Villar y Lozano.
So in 1882, Francisco is designing the church. His original design is quite typical of the time, with plenty of Neo-Gothic elements like ogival windows, exterior buttresses, both the standard and flying kind, and a needle-like bell tower.
But things broke down between Francisco and the powers that be pretty quickly, and about a year after work had begun, so things had barely even gotten started, Francisco quit, leaving Bocabella to find another architect to finish the job. And it was to a young Gaudí that Bocabella turned.
He’d started his career a couple of years earlier and was going great guns and to be the architect for the Sagrada Famila was an honour and a privilege for a devout Catholic like Gaudí. But Gaudí didn’t want to continue on with Francisco’s plans, he decided to take the project in a new direction. Gaudí wanted to create something truly inspired by God and that meant inspired by nature.
Gaudí would go on to completely change the look of the church, giving it his unique style and it would become his most famous work, making him a household name and allowing him to become a
master of modern architecture.
Gaudí
Born in 1852 in Catalonia, Gaudí would soon become a central figure in modern architecture. Shortly after receiving his Architecture degree in 1878, Gaudí was lucky enough to receive his first big commission from the bourgeoisie. Which is quite the accomplishment for one straight out of Uni, but not for Gaudí, the director of the Architecture School is said to have declared when Gaudí graduated:
Gentlemen, we are here today either in the presence of a genius or a madman!
And that’s kind of what you think when looking at any of Gaudí’s work: ‘The guy who designed this was either really smart or just crazy’.
When Gaudí officially took over the Sagrada Família in 1883, he was juggling other projects at the time. At just 31 Gaudí would begin his time working on the church by focusing on the crypt, which had been started by Francisco. It actually turned out to be a pretty good place to start, because while the rest of the church was being built around it, services were able to be held in the finished crypt after it was inaugurated in 1885.
It wasn’t until 1891 that Gaudí started working on the only façade he would see finished in his lifetime, the Nativity façade. Fancying himself a sculptor as well as an architect, Gaudí filled the wall full of stone sculptures, mainly depicting scenes from the bible.
Gaudí was actually fully aware that the construction of the magnificent La Sagrada Família would last for centuries and that he would not see the project finished, and so that is why he chose to work firstly on the Nativity façade. He wanted those who had started the work of the church to see something magnificent finished in their lifetime.
Gaudí was becoming so obsessed by the Sagrada Família that when 1914 rolled around he decided to give the church his undivided attention and declined any other projects. But Gaudí is not a one-race wonder, you can see his work spread all throughout Barcelona. I’m sure there’s even Gaudí walking tours.
Gaudí would become so consumed by the Sagrada Família, that he was known to sleep in his study at the church most nights.
Since taking over from Francisco, Gaudí would take the original neo-Gothic design and blend it with features of the Art Nouveau movement. Gaudí loved sculpting his own style, often changing things like lines and textures as construction continued. Not just the Sagrada Família, but something that is common to all of Gaudí’s work is ‘otherwordlyness’. They all seem to both come from a place on earth and yet, at the same time, they do not.
Gaudí was able to spend nearly 12 years working on nothing else but the Sagrada Família. Then tragedy struck in the form of a tram. In 1926, Gaudí was hit by a tram when attempting to cross the road. He died three days later. After working on the Sagrada Família for almost two decades, Gaudí was rightly buried in the church’s crypt. It’s believed that hundreds of thousands of people came out into the streets to mourn him. Known as ‘God’s Architect’, Gaudí will forever be associated with what is arguably his greatest creation.
Despite devoting his last couple years to the Sagrada Família alone, when he died only a quarter of it had been built, but then again Gaudí always knew that he would never see the buildings completion in his lifetime.
Gaudí had his own style of working. He was more of a trial and error guy, rather than a strict follow the plan guy. So he would make all these scale models of what he wanted the Sagrada Família to be to test things out and see how differing shapes and structures worked. It was often that he would modify or adjust something until it was exactly what he had pictured in his mind. But because of this free-flow way of working, it does leave the unfinished part of the Sagrada Família up for interpretation.
After his death in 1926, Gaudí kind of fell away into the background of Barcelona’s memory. It wasn’t until 1969 that a collection of Gaudí’s works were recognised as Artistic or Historical Monuments of Cultural Interest by the Spanish Ministry of Culture. And it wasn’t until 1984, that some of Gaudí’s work, namely the Palau Güell and Park Güell, were named as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. And then what had been finished of the Sagrada Famila wasn’t included by UNESCO until the very recent 2005. Together Gaudí’s work that appears on the UNESCO World Heritage Site are listed under ‘Works of Antoni Gaudí’. Not too bad an accomplishment, that one.
The Basilica
Barcelona is known for its Gothic churches, but La Sagrada Família isn’t your average Gothic church, it actually looks like it was built out of bones, or maybe sand. You could say that it’s peak Gothic.
Gaudí was heavily influenced by nature, and that meant steering clear of perfectly straight lines. The interior pillars are said to resemble trees, and supposedly when you look up at them from the ground they look to be changing shape, like trees would do swaying in the breeze. Not to mention the tortoise and turtle holding the pillars up, which are meant to represent the earth and the sea. So yeah, definitely has a nature feel about the whole thing.
The Sagrada Família has three facades. First we’ve got the Nativity Façade, which is all about the birth of Jesus, the Passion Façade is centred on the passion of Christ, and the Glory Façade is all about the glory of Jesus.
We already know that it was Gaudí that oversaw and finished the work on the Nativity façade. Going off the name, you can kind of figure out what it’s about, the birth of Jesus. Gaudí looked upon the façade as a representation and symbol of life and creation. So he went ahead and added in symbols that he thought captured life, there are animals and tools displayed as well as a depiction of the Tree of Life.
Facing to the east, the façade has three entrances that each represent the theological virtues. So you’ve got Hope to the left, Charity in the centre, and Faith to the right. At the Charity entrance is where you’ll find the Door of Jesus and the Tree of Life.
The façade then extends into the sky with four bell towers, each dedicated to a different saint. There’s St. Matthew, St. Jude, St. Simon and St. Barnabas. Each of the towers are just over 100 metres tall, and the spiral staircase that is within the eastern most bell tower has been worn smooth. But beware, supposedly the staircase is quite narrow making passing difficult, and without a handrail it makes for a dizzying experience, so if you’re into that kind of thing go for it.
Work on the Passion Façade started in 1954 and would be completed in 1976. The work on this façade was a little easier than others, because the workers were able to go off drawings made by Gaudí. Now I’ve got no clue what the ‘Passion of Christ’ means, but it’s what this façade is dedicated to. And supposedly this explains
its simplicity, unadorned and with bare stone.
Now when the sculptures of Christ on the crucifix were added by the architect at the time, Josep Maria Subirachs, many thought that the sculptures were too abstract and not in keeping with Gaudí’s style. This would actually be a recurring theme after Gaudí’s death, but we’ll go into a bit more detail about that in a little bit.
Gaudí himself actually said this of his drawing design of the Passion façade:
Some will find this door too extravagant; I wanted it to impose fear. To achieve this, I did not avoid shadows, motif coming in and out, and everything to gain a dark effect. I am ready to sacrifice this construction, to cut the columns to give an idea of the cruelty of sacrifice.
Work on the remaining façade, the Glory façade, is currently underway. It’s construction only started in 2002, so not very long ago all things considered. This façade will eventually become the main entrance for the church. It is thought to be the largest and most important of the three facades, mainly because it will be the access point to the central nave.
Dedicated to the Glory of none other than Jesus, it represents his rise from mere mortal man to heavenly body. Because he knew he probably wouldn’t be around for the start of this construction phase, let alone it’s completion, Gaudí didn’t really concern himself with sketches for this one, all that he left behind were really just vague sketches with his general idea of what he thought it might look like.
But the real deal would have representations of Death, Final Judgement and then Glory, and then of course you can’t design this without forgetting Hell and the damnation deserving of anyone who strays from God’s all consuming path.
Now when its finished La Sagrada Família is expected to have 18 towers, that’s a 1 and an 8. 18. You might be thinking ‘that’s a lot of towers’ but each of them has a singular purpose. They will all be representative of one person. So 12 of them will be for the apostles, four of them will be for the evangelists, then you’ve got one for the Virgin Mary, and then the tallest one must be dedicated to, who else but, Jesus Christ himself. So far though, only 8 of the 12 have been built. But that tall one, Jesus’s tower, that one will be super duper tall at 170 metres. In fact when it’s finished the Sagrada Família will actually be the tallest building in Europe of a religious persuasion.
But Gaudí, a devout Catholic himself, was of the opinion that nothing man-made should ever out shine that made by God. So you might be surprised to know that the overall height of La Sagrada Família will, in fact, be one metre shorter than that of Montjuïc, which is the mountain in Barcelona, otherwise known as the highest spot in the city.
While the outside of the Sagrada Família is something to marvel at, the interior is nothing to ignore, it itself has its fair share of amazing things to wonder at.
In keeping with the exterior, the interior has it’s own religious symbology to explore, which are meant to be based off the Gospels and the Book of Apocalypse, so all light hearted stuff in there.
Yet again, Gaudí’s unmistakable style will be seen inside the church and his classic nature inspired décor. Gaudí hated the thought of Gothic buttresses, so he replaced them with the aforementioned tree trunk shaped columns, giving the interior of the church a real forest feel.
The floor plan of the Sagrada Família is just a basic cross. But it’s so big that there’s a lot stuffed in. You can check out an image of the floor plan over on the website for those of you who are interested. But the transept, the crossy over part or arms of the cross has three naves and a large space for walking around. Then the central part of the cross has seven chapels and includes two spiral staircases that give access to the spot where the choir sits. Now the place is pretty bloody big. It measures 90 metres longwise and is 60 metres wide. So plenty of room for all sorts of interesting things.
Construction continued
Today the Sagrada Famillia has been under construction for more than 135 years. Starting all the way back in 1882, it’s definitely taken it’s time to get to that finish line.
As we already know, when Gaudí died only about a quarter of the church overall had been completed. There was the nativity façade, one bell tower and the crypt, which would turn out to be Gaudí’s final resting place.
Lucky for those that came after him, Gaudí had done his best to leave behind detailed drawings and models that showed exactly what he wanted the place to look like when finished.
But there’s a fair bit of controversy around the construction materials and techniques used since Gaudí’s death, with some believing materials and techniques are being used that Gaudí would have steered clear of. And to make matters worse, visitors to the Sagrada Família can clearly see the distinction, both in stone colour and construction style, between the part of the building built by Gaudí and the part built without him. There are even some out there who think the construction of the Sagrada Família should have stopped with Gaudí’s death, and that continuing the construction is a disservice to his memory. But this is not what Gaudí wanted, he knew that the construction would continue long after he himself had died, and as it turns out, the construction of La Sagrada Família has the title of ‘longest running construction project in the world’.
So after Gaudí’s death his assistant, Domènec Sugranyes, was put in charge of the project, and things ticked along slowly. But just a mere 10 years later the Spanish Civil War hit. And the Sagrada Família was not left unscathed, a group of anarchists managed to break into Gaudí’s studio and they set about smashing the models and burning the drawings he’d left behind that the architects and workers were going off to continue construction of the church.
Throughout the Civil War the rate of building was slowed for obvious reasons, even stopping at some points.
But the war was a bloody one. By the end of the Civil War in 1939, 40 churches in Barcelona has been destroyed and 12 people associated with the construction of the Sagrada Família had been killed.
Once they could, workers returned to the church and salvaged what remained of Gaudí’s studio, saving what they could of the photos, drawings and broken model pieces, but almost anything of use had been destroyed.
And so the focus turned to trying to figure out what Gaudí’s intentions had been, but without the models and architectural drawings it was a tough task that not many envied. And the responsibility fell to Francesc de Paula Quintana who took over management of the site after the end of the Civil War in 1939.
So we know that in 1954 the construction for the Passion façade kicked off. But not everyone was happy about it. In the 1960s some architects got together and they wrote an open letter about how they thought continuing the construction of the Sagrada Família was just wrong. They felt that Gaudí wasn’t just an architect, he was an artist, and continuing on with the construction was akin to finishing a painting left half done by a painter. But the patrons, who no doubt had serious cash in on the endeavour, were not pleased and they argued that the church was never about Gaudí, it was actually Francisco’s idea and baby, Gaudí was just the one putting it together.
In 1966 we get a couple of new site managers, Isidre Puig i Boada and Lluís Bonet i Garí. And in 1977, even though the Passion façade was finished, the church was still an empty shell with no interior and no roof. It was basically just a couple walls with towers.
But around the same time a young architect, Mark Burry, was in Barcelona specifically to study Gaudí, and he stumbled across the two head architects, Isidre and Lluís. What Burry learned from them was that they were ready to move onto the next challenge of the interior of the building, but they were just a little lost on how to go about it.
So after joining the team Burry worked with the remains of the broken models for over a year trying to figure out Guadi’s vision for the inside of the church. But all he had to show for his hard work was architectural blueprints for just one window, so not a real great start.
As we fast forward through the years a little, we go through a couple of lead architects and finally we land in 1986, where Josep Maria Subirachs, we’ve met him before, is making a start on the sculptures that will be displayed on the Passion façade. Subirachs’ work took so long that the scaffolding changed from the wooden scaffolding when he started to the metal scaffolding when the work was finally completed in 2010.
So in this time, Burry had been doing some travelling, and when he returned to Spain in the 90s he found a new piece of equipment in his office, a computer. This new piece of technology was actually a god-send, (See what I did there?) and it allowed the pace of construction to pick up.
The computer had some architectural software installed but back in the 90s it really struggled with the complexity of Gaudí’s designs. So Burry went looking for others who used sophisticated software in their designs, and he stumbled across those who design aeroplanes.
So with the stronger aeronautical software that could handle Gaudí’s complex vision, Burry was able to get a plan for the interior of the church started. But even better than that, he was able to find a way where individual parameters could be changed and the effects on the rest of the structure would be reflected. Basically allowing them to do in the program what Gaudí would do in his mind, change and move things until they’re perfect.
At the same time that Burry was figuring this whole thing out, Frank Gehry, another world renowned architect, and his team had been looking for their own software that could handle parametric design. And so with the help from Mark Burry, Gehry Technologies actually went on to develop their own parametric design software just for architects in the early 2000s. And it’s pretty possible that without this software there would still be no inside of the church to go and see. And it wouldn’t be long before the interior was finished, 2010 is when the finishing touches were being put on the interior, showing a dramatic decrease in construction times.
Finishing La Sagrada Família
So as we already know the Nativity façade and crypt were added to the UNESCO World Heritage Site list in 2005. As one of seven Gaudí buildings included on the list, UNESCO has this to say about them:
These monuments represent an eclectic, as well as a very personal, style which was given free reign in the design of gardens, sculpture and all decorative arts, as well as architecture.
And things only got better for the Sagrada Família from there, in 2010 Pope Benedict XVI stopped by and consecrated the Temple effectively granting it a Minor Basilica. This was a pretty big deal for the Sagrada Família as basilica’s are churchs that have been granted a special status by the pope for historical or sacred reasons. There are only four major basilicas, all of them currently in Rome, all the other basilicas are known as minor basilicas, like the Sagrada Família.
And then the following year the Barcelona City Award in Architecture and Urban Planning was awarded to the basilica. And since 2012, Jordi Faulí has been the head architect on the Sagrada Família, which continues to be constructed as close to Gaudí’s original plan as possible.
But in 2016 a pretty major issue was discovered. All the way back in 1885 those working on the construction supposedly applied for a permit, but for some reason, probably due to a paperwork mix-up, that permit was neither granted nor rejected and everyone just kind of forgot about the whole thing. But in 2019 the building permit for construction had finally been approved. Here’s what Janet Sanz, Barcelona’s deputy mayor for ecology, urbanism and mobility, told a press conference about the whole affair:
A historical anomaly in the city — that an emblematic monument like the Sagrada Família … didn’t have a building permit.
Luckily that was all fixed up and the site now has a seven year license which should carry them through to a completed product. Fingers crossed.
2020 was a pretty big year for the Sagrada Família, as it was for the rest of the world. February started out well with the Towers of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary growing higher than the Passion and Nativity facades. And then in March, like the rest of the world, everything was brought to an abrupt halt by the pandemic. But when October rolled around construction was able to start up again and the focus was on finishing the Tower of the Virgin Mary, and that focus continued into 2021. And by the time this article is published the 12 pointed star should be being put into place on the top of the tower.
With only a couple years until the 100th anniversary of Gaudí’s death, which is 2026, it’s hoped that the Sagrada Família will be finished for the occasion. Good news is that the final stage of construction has finally started and so 2026 is looking like a good estimate of the completion date.
What’s interesting about this particular project is that when it’s finally finished, the whole thing would have taken longer to build than the Egyptian Pyramids, and if it had taken another fifty years it would have taken the same amount of time as it took to build the Great Wall of China. Basically if it does meet its completion date of 2026, it would have been in an active construction stage for close to 150 years. Now that’s a big project.
What’s interesting is that when delays cropped up, Gaudí is known to have said:
My client [as in God] is in no hurry.
I feel this would have been Gaudí’s response to those who say that 150 years of construction is too long.
What could have been a factor in the slow pace is that the work is directly financed by donations made by the visitors. Gaudí seems to have known this well when he said:
The Expiatory Temple of the Sagrada Família is made by the people and this is reflected in it. It is a work that is in the hands of God and the will of the people.
And it certainly was with the slow pace of donations trickling in. Although these days, three million visitors every year donate to the project, which adds up to about 25 million euros each year.
But really who wouldn’t want to see the completion of such a magnificent monument. La Sagrada Família is a real national and city icon and it definitely stands out with its unique exterior and amazing height.
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Originally published at https://destinationhistorypod.com on December 12, 2021.
