Sagrada Família Interior

---

Sagrada Família Interior

December 2010

You would have to be blind not to appreciate the Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família and even then running ones hands over the giant pillars and waiting for the eco of your footsteps to come back from the gigantic interior space would still give you an awesome sense of the place… But be quick as while the newly opened interior is quiet in the Mediterranean winter in the busy summer months even this behemoth will most likely be full to capacity with interested tourists and devout followers (of Gaudí).

Work on the church began back in 1882, before Gaudi took over in 1883 and lifted the project to a completely new level. We have been visiting on and off over the years to check on progress (in Scott’s case since the 1970s) and finally the main interior open!

While many catholic cathedrals and churches are packed with religious relics the Sagrada Família is still a constructions site and the only relic here is Gaudí who is entombed in the crypt after being run over by a tram in 1926. The anticipated completion date is 2026 — the centennial of Gaudí's death. The current construction deadlines give the optimistic date of 2017, whatever the date we are planning on being there!

As a penitent church (funded by donations and not the catholic church) the Sagrada Familia has been slowly rising above its more humble origins. It was never intended to be a cathedral, but the scale of the building as re-designed by Gaudí has put it into the big stakes.

The building itself is like a gathering of the churches big wigs with eighteen spires, representing in ascending order of height the 12 Apostles, the 4 Evangelists (Mathew, Mark, Luke and John), the Virgin and of course the mother of all spires representing JC (currently under construction).

Tourists and the devout gawp at the building and trip up (and carefully down) the apostles’ towers that ring the building. Going up you are aided by a lift through the main part (you need to pre-book) before walking up across and the down another spire. Not for the faint hearted!

Dali referred to the architecture as:

soft and hairy… of terrifying and edible beauty.

and he didn’t even get to trip up the top of the stairs.

Fellow kiwi (and Executive Architect) Mark Burry describes the experience of the building more accurately:

You pinch yourself.

We didn’t need to pinch ourselves when we visited in November this year, we thought we knew what were in for having monitored progress over the years. But finally being able to walk into the open area of main nave brought a tear to our eyes. The vault in the central nave sours forty-five metres while the side nave vaults reach thirty metres. That’s 150 feet up to the ceiling folks! People crane their necks to view it, and in places safety guides are placed to remind you to look down and mind your step.

While checking out the ceiling a bit of it (relax – it was a very small fragment of tile) fell and hit Fran on the shoulder. This is now safely tucked into an appropriate box as a relic of the building, and timely reminder this is still a building site after all.

We won’t bore you with more words, and let the pictures give you some idea of what it is like… but for a true inspiration go see for yourself!

---

Comments

[Linda]

awestruck
You captured the Sagrada Familia I experienced so well in your photos. What an amazing building. Your perspectives were wonderful.