Sagrada Familia

Those readers who are ‘au fait’ with the glorious city of Barcelona will doubtless – at some point or another – have visited Gaudi’s yet to be completed masterpiece – the Sagrada Familia. Regardless of one’s spiritual persuasion (or indeed one’s lack of such) it is surely impossible not to discern in this extraordinary endeavour substantiation that man can indeed on occasion rise above his baser nature to create something which touches upon the numinous.

With its foundation stone laid in 1882 and the project handed to Gaudi a year later, this expiatory church was little more than 15% complete at the point of the architect’s death in 1926. Funded entirely by donations and hampered by the Spanish Civil War – during which the workshops containing many of Gaudi’s plans and models for the cathedral were destroyed by fire – it is estimated that the halfway point in construction was only acheived as recently as 2010. Modern building techniques and an influx of funding following the Barcelona Olympics have – however – enbled the setting of a hopeful target completion date of 2028.

It is simply not possible to walk around this singular monument without wanting to take photographs of it. It is equally impossible (for me at least!) to do the edifice justice. The exterior is probably well know by all. These shots are of the interior:

…and just a couple of the exterior: