Antoni Gaudí’s genius can be seen all over Barcelona but in La Sagrada Familia even a fleeting glimpse is enough to convince you that the most famous architect in history was inspired by divine forces. This church is a fantasy creation: a playful Gothic masterpiece which looks like no other religious pile on earth.

It is the sheer scale of La Sagrada which grabs you first. Work on this colossal building began in 1882 and, incredibly, 126 years later, it still isn’t finished. A team of craftsmen toil away each day, but a completion date is still years away, making the Sagrada one of the most interesting building sites you could ever hope to visit.
Gaudí spent more than 40 years of his life before his death in 1926 on La Sagrada. His remains are actually buried beneath the nave of the church.

The crypt, apse and the nativity facade were all completed in his lifetime and remain the most beautiful elements of his creation. In the 1930s, during the Spanish Civil War, anarchists set fire to Gaudi’s intricate plans for the building, so the ongoing work is a matter of conjecture and no little controversy.

What is known about La Sagrada is that Gaudí created it in honour of his Christian faith. In front of the church, the nativity facade tells the story of Christ’s birth, and through extraordinary vivid stone carvings the virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity are also represented. Gaudí planned two other facades for La Sagrada: the Passion and the Glory, the latter of which is now being worked upon. 12 bell towers dedicated to the apostles are planned with eight already complete. These honeycombed towers stretch towards the heavens at extraordinary heights, the largest of which is a positively neck-straining 170 metres.

Gaudí’s inspiration for La Sagrada Familia came from the natural environment. Introduced to the delights of the countryside by his mother at a young age, he regarded nature as his muse and incorporated many of the structures found in various flora and fauna in the church’s design.

The symbols of Jesus, Mary and Joseph at the bottom of the Nativity Facade for instance, resemble the twisting shapes in the tendrils of climbing plants. To decorate the apse, Gaudí used as models the small animals that ran around the Temple and the spikes of grass that grew on site.

The interior of the church naves are similar to a tree with the trunk, branches and a mass of leaves acting as a ceiling and between them, some small holes through which you can see sunlight. Overall, the intention was to give visitors the feeling they are walking through a wood.

La Sagrada Familia is one of those magical creations which have long since passed into mass appeal. It is Spain’s most visited sight, thronged every day with visitors from all over the world.

For a building still to be completed, La Sagrada is a testament to the power of imagination and the ongoing legacy of Antoni Gaudí.