The Sagrada Família Takes Its Final Shape
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The Sagrada Família, a famous cathedral in Barcelona, has taken its final shape after over a century of construction, with visitors and commenters praising its beauty and engineering.
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On the flipside, I remember thinking it was a kitsch architectural icon and my family was bullying me into going to visit by dictating my plans while solo traveling.
When I went inside, I had a brief moment where I was struck by awe, and wondered if I should consider converting to Catholicism.
You’re not alone. This is one very conscious motivation for the beauty of Catholic art (not the only motive, but a very real one). Beauty is intelligible and leads the mind upward, toward its ultimate source. Beauty is understood as a transcendental, along with the good, the true, and unity, which is to say, being understood from different perspectives.
In other words, beauty has been an instrument for leading people toward conversion for a long time. There’s even the term “apostolate of beauty” [0].
[0] https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?rec...
Of course one would think modern methods would have sped things up considerably, but it wasn't until the advent of technologies this century that things really progressed.
My only regret is not going inside as it was waaaay too hot to stand in line for hours to get inside. Though I walked around it taking pictures.
The thing is a celebration of creation, inventiveness, and natural beauty. Maybe even playfulness - though being a catholic building there's some requisite "death" mixed in: I guess the full spectrum of life is lurking in there.
The English word "gaudy" (probably) comes from the Latin gaudere or gaudium (to rejoice, joy), which is also the (supposed) origin of the name Gaudí. Much more appropriate than its current meaning in English.
https://xkcd.com/1053/
I first glimpsed it while doing a touristy bike tour my first day in Barcelona and it’s hard to convey how surreal it is, like a video game’s final level glitching into its tutorial stage.
That said, if on limited time, definitely see the Sagrada Familia. It was one of my favourite tourist sites in Spain, even beyond just Barcelona.
Parc Guell https://parkguell.barcelona/ and La Padera https://www.lapedrera.com/en are must sees for Gaudi
Battló is the best one for me by far. I love the organic shapes and the light well and the soft wood etc. Wow
Today you really have to reserve, sometimes months in advance if it’s during the high season.
Today I wouldn't even dream of that. You really have to plan ahead for all the major sights that include an entrance.
All that said, if they still have the LED-installation at the exit - and if you're like me, and a little sensitive to visual stimuli - avoid that at all costs. It is 360° (or more? I think it's the floor and ceiling, too) of flashing lights and sound, which reduced me to a catatonic state, squatting in the corner with my eyes tight shut and my hands pressed over my ears. It was almost, but not quite (which says something for how good the house itself is), enough to ruin the experience.
In the whole of Spain, the south has a significant history with a lot of historical buildings and very old city centers. Sevilla especially, but Granada or Cordoba are gems too - and I'm skipping lots of smaller cities or villages like Ronda, Setenil or Toledo more in the north, each more interesting than Barcelona. Unless of course the goal is to party, then none of the previous villages are very appealing :-)
It's maybe the most heavily planned and designed European capital.
Maybe it's hard to see that coming from the US where all the cities have been planned in the last centuries and you are used to see blocks everywhere, but in Europe it's the exception, and the way it have been done in Barcelona is, I think, unique in the world.
If you don't know the concept of superblocks, there you go : https://www.citiesforum.org/news/superblock-superilla-barcel... but to summarize, Barcelona have been divided in superblocks containing blocks. Inside those superblocks, there are less cars and inside the blocks, there are barely any car at all. What that means is that each superblock is like a little city and each block is like a peaceful village. Hundreds of peaceful places inside of a busy european capital.
It would be fantastic if the whole city was implemented using superblocks, but the reality of it is that the areas where superblocks have been planned go up in price, pushing out low earning locals and bringing in foreigners who can afford it.
This might have been ok for a while in areas like Poblenou which were extremely underdeveloped 20 years ago (mostly industrial buildings) but even the new incarnation of superblocks (green axes) which are mostly about pedestrianization of streets and squares always results in rent increases.
There's no good solution, I would like to see a modern city built with pedestrians in mind from the get-go though.
For example, the Palau de la Música Catalana is amazing, and has lots of the fluid forms and nature iconography you might have assumed was unique to Gaudi, but it's by a different architect (Domènech i Montaner, says wikipedia).
I'm biased, but for me it's one of the most beautiful gothic cathedrals in the world, the lights inside are spectacular.
I was never into architecture and am not a religious person but visiting the Sagrada Familia was profound. I came out a slightly different man than one who walked into it just half an hour before. No CGI hack comes close.
And medieval people definitely built monuments to themselves. A great example is Battle Abbey [0]. The official reason it was built was as penance for William the conqueror killing so many English, but there is definitely a strong case to be made that building such a grand abbey was in 0art to signify the new Norman rule and to remind people of who was in charge. They weren't venerating the architect, but it was very clear to everyone who paid for the abbey and William remained very much linked to the structure. That would have been one of the most impressive buildings for a very large area, even it's ruins remain impressive nearly a millennium later. It's a religious building, but it was even at the time very much linked to a secular ruler (inasmuch as the rulers of the time were secular).
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Abbey
Not many people realise that the more distant locations in Shakespeare's plays were close to science fiction. If you were a British peasant visiting "Verona" or "Venice" was like visiting the ISS. You might get swept up to fight in France, and there was a tiny chance of joining the navy. But most people spent most of their lives within a tiny area, with little idea of what was happening elsewhere.
So cathedrals were stunning. If you somehow visited a cathedral city you'd be struck dumb by the size - unimaginable to someone who grew up on a small holding.
The legend say that when the king tried to flee the revolution he was only recognized due to a coin with its face engraved in it. A teacher taught me this one with a variant where the king itself gave the coin to pay in a tavern. Now even it is just a legend, that also gives an interesting reflection on what it means to be famous at this time.
https://www.numismatique-en-maconnais.fr/2018/04/larrestatio...
The Washington Monument in DC, for example, famously is different colors because they had to change the source of marble during construction when funding halted for a time.
If would likely be even frillier, more colourful, and more organic if Gaudi had seen it all the way through.
It's still one of the modern wonders of the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cologne_Cathedral
Fiction, but you if wonder about things like this, you might be interested in The Pillars Of The Earth series about the building of a cathedral in 12th century England.
The difference light quality makes to the experience is remarkable, and I implore anyone that visits to ensure you go at the right times on a clear sunny day.
You may think you've seen well lit stained glass before, but it's like freaking lazer beams of thick light penetrating the environment to the point where it doesn't seem natural.
> On a perfect September afternoon, I walked alone to find the church.
> One moment, only trees. The next, La Sagrada Familia.
> To stand there, before the century of brilliance and determination that combined to create this mass of stone and glass, on the edge between nature and society, and see, and sense that I too am seen, was one of the great privileges of my life.
Came here to say exactly this!
It's nothing like I've ever seen before so I'm surprised by the comments at the end of the article that make it seem like its originality has waned over the years. You can feel the conviction and passion that have been poured into it for over a century.
I can't wait to visit it again. I really love it.
Related/unrelated, part of my joy in the sagrada familia is that being a tourist feels essentially the same as being a pilgrim. If you get a chance to visit parc guell, you aren't exactly experiencing it as a park, but as a tour through the different ideas in the park. (Compare this with an unguided stroll through Central Park, where you and all of the other visitors are likely experiencing it as a park (the way it was intended)
^ I think! In my experience it's occasionally overlooked in a short trip to Paris, whereas if you're going to just see one Gaudi, make it the cathedral
His only overtly political leanings with age became his catalan nationalism and devout catholicism.
I don't know why people keep stating lies on the internet with arrogance. Please stop lying.
https://blog.sagradafamilia.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/c...
Our guide showed us on his phone pictures how the colors change in different months.
I never thought about how I would build a church to exemplify Gods creation, but after that I wondered about cathedrals out of glass or crystal. I must have raved like a mad man about the Sagrada to my friends who had chosen to stay in the hostel!
It made me appreciate cathedrals more. Like now they are are old and ancient, but imagine living in a medieval village and making a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to a big city and being dumb struck about the tallest building you have ever seen and architecture which is familiar but you could have never dreamed up.
It really is an amazing building can sit beside all the gothic cathedrals in terms of beauty.
I don't like the author's politics, but I did like the book.
https://www.johngalthostel.cz/
Similar approach, different era end hence execution and style. During my stay in Barcelona I could not help but draw comparisons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strasbourg_Cathedral
> The construction of the cathedral, which had started in the year 1015 and had been relaunched in 1190, was finished in 1439
"finished" is arguable because it still misses one spire ;) but that's now part of its character.
> Standing in the centre of the Place de la Cathédrale, at 142 metres (466 feet), Strasbourg Cathedral was the world's tallest building from 1647 to 1874 (227 years) [..] Today it is the sixth-tallest church in the world and the tallest extant structure built entirely in the Middle Ages.
From clair-obscur lighting inside to outside horror vacui vs a clean and geometric interior, it is a cathedral of contrast, whose architecture is not just a thing in itself but also extends to the area it is sat in, e.g the streets around and the plaza channel the "devil's wind", a nearly constant airflow running around the exterior that symbolically cannot enter the cathedral, which gives an immediate impression of calm as you enter.
It also houses since 1352 an astronomical clock reminiscent of the Antikhytera mechanism, and notable for having a Copernician (heliocentric) orrery since 1547; the confluence of science and clergy is yet another contrast.
Surrounding - and generally in the whole city - buildings are tall-ish but much less than Barcelona, making the Strasbourg Cathedral absolutely towering, whether you stand in front of it or from dozens of miles away.
One thing that impressed me about it was its effect on others. There were lots of Japanese tourists there at the time. I climbed the stairs up one of the towers with a Japanese man festooned with cameras as usual, I had my SLR with me too. When we got to the top we sat in silence looking out onto the church with it's unfinished roof, neither of us took a single picture. I think both of us were first overwhelmed and then we realized that no picture would capture what we saw and felt. I did take a few pictures of the spiral stairs on the way down, just to have a souvenir of the place.
When I got to the bottom I shovelled all my Spanish coins and notes in the donation box. Perhaps they bought a few kilos of cement with it, I like to think that I helped in an infinitesimally small way to build it.
That said. Dying to go back. So much progress has been made since then.
In that sense, the building is almost too successful - a church is meant to glorify God, but there's no disentangling the Sagrada from Gaudi. You cannot stand in the building and not feel a sense of awe for the mind that created this, and the building is far, far too famous to ever be a servicing church. It was such an interesting contradiction of an achievement - it's such an incredible artistic accomplishment and so successful in its intent to inspire and as an act of devotion that you just cannot look past the finger to see the moon. The artist eclipses the subject.
(As an aside, Orwell makes mention of the Sagrada Familia in Homage to Catalonia, and it's an incredible paragraph: "For the first time since I had been in Barcelona I went to have a look at the cathedral – a modern cathedral, and one of the most hideous buildings in the world... Unlike most of the churches in Barcelona it was not damaged during the revolution – it was spared because of its ‘artistic value’, people said. I think the Anarchists showed bad taste in not blowing it up when they had the chance.")
Sagrada Família is, however, a basilica which is a title of honor bestowed on churches by the pope.
https://www.stgilescathedral.org.uk/
Ironically it is strongly associated with presbyterianism.
Then you see this, a church over 100 years in the making, finally being realised in the last ~10 years because innovations in stone cutting have made these intricate designs more feasible and progress has rapidly improved. It's awesome.
That's in the eye of the beholder.
Pertinent HN article + discussion, which I love to revisit every once and a while, even though I do not work in anything related to architecture.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23582942
The fact that so many people from all over the world are drawn to older architecture with "tons of unnecessary ornamentation" makes you think where we went wrong in recent decades.
I think the "form over function" dogma has taken over to such an extent that it's creating miserable, concrete and glass hellscapes that are foisted upon the public by detatched "starchitects". A great point that was mentioned somewhere (maybe in that artlicle I linked) is that unlike other forms of art, architecture is forced into your view, whether you like it or not. If you hate modern art, you can simply avoid that msueum.
With newer stone CNC machines now advancing, hopefully we can recreate the beautiful, intricate craftsmanship of the past, and indeed even develop wacky, creative new forms too and move away from these horrible, bland designs that have taken over everywhere, and made every cityscape look generic and indistinct.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheikh_Zayed_Grand_Mosque
But in the West I'd say yes, we have pretty much stopped. One more sign of our decadence. You have to go elsewhere to see this kind of projects.
Isn't it a sign of the opposite? Grand buildings for the sake of being grand sounds more decadent than spending the time, effort and money on something else.
Anyway, I would argue that "being grand" is not useless, and this kind of monuments do have a value. From a shallow point of view, they bring lots of tourism. But apart from that, they have artistic, cultural, symbolic and, in some cases, religious value. They attract people and make the cities they are in more desirable. So I do think not building them anymore is a sign of
The Church has all the time in the world.
Imagine trying to get funding today for a building project that is scheduled to be completed long after everyone alive today would be dead. I can’t imagine that being possible. It’s a pity: I wonder what wonders we could have built using modern technology over such a long timescale.
So not quite “over a century” but getting close. :)
There was a time when architecture was the height of showing off, showing off skill, artistry, etc. I think we build beautiful things today, but they aren't necessarily buildings. Ok, 8½ might not be as impressive as the Sagrada Familia, but it is beautiful all the same.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Line,_Saudi_Arabia
No matter what you think of it, you can't say it's not an immense-scale project requiring decades of construction.
I found myself astounded, struck speechless, and moved to tears. I was in awe.
Gaudi is someone we software engineers should revere. He made things precisely and powerfully functional while also making them beautiful.
Do not miss seeing Sagrada Familia if you ever get the chance.
It's that the city of Barcelona happily let him build his gloriously insane buildings all across town, and on top of that get free reign over the ginormous cathedral project!
Having lived in San Francisco, it seems absolutely unreal...
Americans also often refer to Sacré-Coeur in Paris as a cathedral, but it too is just a lovely basilica.
"This is the home of a 47th level battle mage, and so it is important to call it a fortress or an enchanter's fortified tower. Only if he graduates to level 50 or above does it become a full Keep."
(As a side note, the battle mage is actually a 300kg dude called Kevin who lives in a bedsit his mum pays for.)
You can use whatever words you like, but people are similarly free to judge you for your ignorance. Willfulness doesn't change its fundamental nature.
It's not something I'd deliberately get wrong as a gesture of disrespect.
But the problem is that the fans of the different sky-fairies get awfully upset over the colour of the invisible sandals. One former friend of mine complained that I called his bunch of god-botherers Roman Catholics and would I please stop that because it was the one true Catholic church. I pointed out 2 or 3 other Catholic churches and he dismissed them and demanded his was accorded appropriate respect.
I told him, and I mean it, that I accorded it 100% of the respect and deference it merited, deserved and earned over 2000 years. They're a bunch of deluded loonies telepathically telling a dead Jew on a stick that they love him because they think his dad will torture them forever if they don't. It's a death cult that worships a radical hippy who preached poverty but they're obscenely rich, and the alleged founder said no other gods, so they've invented 2 more main gods and worship gold-plated statues of made-up gods, of whom they invent more every year.
These people killed people like me when they had power.
It is our duty to society to point out how utterly ridiculous their cults are.
Lovely architecture, though.
One of the most waterfall projects of all time actually had a fair bit of agile behind it.
I was in Barcelona a couple times in the 00s and the work seemed slow and frozen in time.
Visited again in the late 00s and the building seemed to have grown by a lot.
Saw a picture of where it is now and it seemed it went even faster.
I remember at some point the target date for completion was in the '40s, I would be happy to visit the complete building earlier, it's one of my favorite buildings.
If we go by the above then Sagrada Familia is far from perfect. I guess it depends on taste but I found it extremely kitschy. The lighted signs inside make me think more of a bar than a church. And I found the actual Barcelona Cathedral beautiful. There's also a pretty heavy discussion if the present thing is what Gaudi intended.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRv_syz2DAc
Go inside. It’s worth it. The light is beautiful, and the architecture rewards unhurried attention. Take your time to wander, don't rush.
One hundred and fifty years in the making, and still unfinished. The two completed façades serve as the "secondary" entrances; the main entrance is yet to be built. Completing the project will require demolishing four city blocks, a plan that is controversial and complicated because people live there. Many of those residents bought at lower prices with a clause acknowledging this; when the Sagrada Família is finished, they will have to leave.
What church/cathedral is superior in your opinion?
For others, it’s the spiritual resonance of a place. The Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela has stirred something deeper within, but maybe that was just me. I experienced the same with Lourdes and Le Puy-en-Velay in France because they carried something that felt "sacred" and transformative, not only from the buildings but the actual place.
Then there are those who value historical or religious authority. Cathedrals like St. Peter’s in Rome or the Papal Palace in Avignon have that kind of symbolic weight, and I assume some would favor them over the more "profane" work of Gaudi.
I would like to add two (former) churches to your list: the Hagia Sophia (it's really humbling to think that it was already standing for 900+ years when the Turks conquered Constantinople 500+ years ago) and the Pantheon in Rome, which despite being several centuries older, had the largest dome in the world for more than 1000 years.
Have to go back to see the inside which looks amazing.
The hills offer spectacular view over Barcelona and The Sagrada Família. Park Güell is situated on one of those, but if you plan to visit it you can can also come to Bunkers del Carmel on another hill with a relatively short work, the views from it are better and no tickets are necessary.
Maybe it’s the execution or the change in technique or materials over the years, or maybe it’s because it lacks patina but it honestly looks like a patchwork of stones cobbled together with no global uniformity. It’s a giant mess.
The (current) main entrance with the 4 tall towers look awesome, but the sides, oh boy, they really look quite bad. I thought someone else had designed them.
anyways maybe my expectations were too high, or maybe it’s because I am one of the few foreigners who prefer Madrid over Barcelona. I don’t know... Definitely worth the trip if you havn’t seen it though.
But the connection was late so we were put on a bus tour of the city, starting with the mountains outside it. The bus let us out at an overlook with a view of the city, which looked more or less like any other far off city.
And then... what the holy hell was that Thing dominating the skyline? It didn't even look real. I had to refocus my eyes just to be able to actually see it.
I never did get to go inside, but we drove past, and the driver explained the history of Sagrada Familia. As bizarre as it was from a distance it's even weirder up close. It looks like something by HR Giger. I dare not imagine what's inside.
I will have to go some day.
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