Basic information

Location: Plaça de la Sagrada Família, s/n. Barcelona

History: The Sagrada Família is the best known work of Gaudí, this huge project in which he worked all his life -in fact he lives inside until his dead- was started in 1882 by the architect F. Villar i Lozano with a project in neo gothic style. Gaudí undertook the work direction in 1883 changing not only the aesthetic of work, but giving to it a gigantic dimension with eighteen bell towers representing the Apostles, four towers Representing the Evangelists, one representing the Virgin Mary, and the biggest one with 170 meters high, crowned with the cross of four branches typical of Gaudí, symbolizing Jesus Christ. Every window, column, element and shape referrers to saints, institutions or mysteries of catholic faith. Today surpassing 100 years from it's start, the works follow with the timing of a medieval cathedral, not really too quick !!, nevertheless the optimistic think in a end of works into the first quarter of XXI century (??).

Description: At the present stage, only eight of the twelve bell towers for the Apostles are completely finished, and Gaudí only built before his dead -at the age of 74, trampled by a tram in 1926- four of the apostles towers , the apse, and the Nativity façade. The gothic plant of the church is a Latin cross with five longitudinal aisles and a large apse with six chapels. An external cloister enclose the ensemble. Three façades, (two of them finished and explained below -the Birth and the Passion ones-) have the mission to illustrate in an understandable way the mystery of the birth, passion and resurrection -glory- of Jesus Christ. The polemic on the works continuation from 1952, was due to lack of original drawings, mainly destroyed during the Spanish civil war (1936-1939).