Sagrada Familia - "Gaudi's Church"

As you have seen from the last blog, Antoni Gaudi had some strange building designs. Gaudi died in 1926 after having spent 40 years building a cathedral called the Sagrada Familia. As you can see from his picture, Gaudi looks very normal. I can assure you, that he was anything but normal if his buildings are any indication.

He was asked to build the Sagrada Familia, but it was never finished. For years it sat unfinished without any work being performed on it. After the Olympics, renewed interest in completing the Cathedral has been generated and today they are working on it.

As you can see, construction is continuing on the cathedral as we speak.

He actually started and completed the back door first. Most of the front door is completed and is very impressive. Mostly, it is the spires that are missing. Notice the tortoise at the foot of a column?

The Pope dedicated the Cathedral last year and they now hold church services inside. The camera does not do justice to the size of the inside. It is massive. Notice the people is some of the photos for an idea of how big it is inside.

Beautiful stained glass adorns all windows, like most churches in Europe and the United States. However, these windows are enormous.

I don't know about you, but it looks like a shark's fin in the waves in this piece of stained glass? I told you Gaudi was something else.

For the cross and Jesus Christ, Gaudi out did himself. Everything but the cross and Jesus Christ is made of glass, even though it is hard to tell from the pictures.

The back door is completed and simply amazing.

Gaudi even designed several additional buildings that were not connected to the church.

Even though all the plans were burned during World War I, several paintings, drawings, and models still exist which is helping to complete the Cathedral as Gaudi planned.

Gaudi actually designed the look of his building up-side-down by using strings and weights to represent the walls and spires. Notice the mirror above which shows how the spires should look when completed. This is really ingenious.

When the Cathedral is finished, there will be four blocks of businesses and apartments torn down to give the church a commanding view of the harbor. Keep in mind, that when the church was started, there were no buildings anywhere near it. It was all farm land. Today it is part of the city of Barcelona.

For those going to Barcelona, you need several days to see the beauty of the city. The people are friendly and for the most part speak better English than I spoke Spanish. Even though it is a large city, it was relatively clean and felt safe even though we heard that pick pockets were something to be concerned about and we were told to be on our guard accordingly as we walked the city.