Barcelona’s most celebrated landmark, drawing about five million annual visitors, evokes the Gothic tradition in which it is rooted. Antoni Gaudí’s Basilica Sagrada Família contains familiar components of that style: a Latin Cross layout, Gothic arches, cloisters, representations of saints and apostles, rose windows. But the transformations wrought by Gaudí and his collaborators are a triumph of architectural and sculptural imagination that has no real analogue.
Here is something as grand as the great cathedrals of Europe, but stranger and more unexpected—a fusion of local materials, biblical imagery, geometrical innovation, and the organic motifs and broken mosaics characteristic of the Catalan Modernista style. The church’s fanciful, conical towers have drawn comparison to Disney castles. But the luminous interior, designed by a man of such profound piety that he was known as “God’s architect,” compels awe even in those devoid of religious belief.
Almost since its 1882 inception—Gaudí inherited the project a year later from the neo-Gothically inclined Francisco de Paula del Villar—the world’s longest-running construction project has been an object of irritation, admiration and parody. Evolving over more than a century, the church encompasses a jumble of styles and ideas, indebted to the region’s distinctive take on Art Nouveau but not constrained by it.
When Gaudí died in 1926, at age 73, in a tram accident, the building was less than a quarter complete. Anarchists destroyed many of Gaudí’s drawings and models during the 1930s’ Spanish Civil War, derailing construction. Money woes followed. Beginning in the 1980s, sophisticated computer-aided modeling put the work back on track; Covid-19 briefly halted it. In Barcelona, the basilica, funded by donations and now, more amply, by tourist dollars, has become a metaphor for dilatoriness and delay. But the sluggish construction pace has arguably been fruitful, allowing new generations of Catalan artists to make their mark on its design.
The basilica was due to be finished for this year’s centenary of Gaudí’s death. Instead, the anniversary merely signaled an important milestone: the completion, in February, of the central Tower of Jesus Christ, which made the Sagrada Família the world’s tallest church. Still pending are the sculpting of the south-facing Glory façade, the eventual front of the church, celebrating Christ triumphant, and the addition of a grand entrance staircase envisioned by Gaudí. Plans for the latter, which would displace nearby residents, remain mired in controversy.
Today, visitors enter via the ornate Nativity façade, on the church’s eastern side. Inside, the eye immediately travels upward, led by rows of slightly sloping, fluted, twisting columns that seem to soar to the heavens. Near the summit they metamorphose into stone tree branches, interweaving like a forest canopy. Nature appears to have breached the interior. Rainbows of light stream through both transparent and stained-glass windows, illuminating the cavernous space.
A closer look reveals ingenious contrasts, apparent symmetries dissolving into distinctive details. The arboreal columns, for instance, differ in materials, colors, shapes and decorative features. They are clad variously in red porphyry, black basalt, gray granite and yellowish sandstone from nearby Montjuïc, with emblems symbolizing the four evangelists, the 12 apostles and an assortment of Catholic saints and geographic regions.
Joan Vila-Grau’s brilliantly hued stained-glass windows seem suspended between abstraction and figuration, never resolving the tension. The color palette is dominated by greens, blues and violets toward the east, marking the sun’s rise, and reds, oranges and golds to the west. Cascading light effects alter with the time of day.
Designed by Gaudí, the Nativity façade is both naturalistic and overflowing with natural imagery: lilies and palm trees, a tortoise and sea turtle, insects and frogs, sheep and ducks. Intricate sculptural groups depict the Annunciation, the birth of Jesus, the Adoration of the Magi and the shepherds, Herod’s massacre of the innocents, the flight into Egypt, Jesus preaching at the temple, and more. A cypress, representing the Tree of Life, crowns the central portal. It is topped with symbols of the Holy Trinity and laden with doves representing mankind. None of this can be grasped quickly. It is too dense.
Josep Maria Subirachs’s stylized sculptures, commissioned in 1986 for the church’s western wall, are more legible. Mocked by some as the “Darth Vader” façade for its bizarrely helmeted Roman soldiers, the Passion façade embodies the New Testament story of betrayal, suffering and transcendence in angular, expressionistic figures. The isolated image of Judas bestowing a traitor’s kiss on Jesus is especially arresting. Other scenes include the Last Supper, Pilate washing his hands, Christ carrying the cross, and the Crucifixion itself.
From afar, the Sagrada Família, shrouded in mist, appears otherworldly. A stroll around its periphery, through the crowds, shows its elaborate towers still framed by a construction crane. Enter and, finally, the enchantment takes hold. Insisting on both the singularity of Gaudí’s vision and the glories of artistic collaboration, the Sagrada Família woos believer and nonbeliever alike. It is sacred architecture as a slowly unfurling spiritual quest.
