Day 11: Sagrada Familia

Today, we had tickets to go see the Sagrada Familia. This church is the main life's work of Antoni Gaudi, the most orginal of the Art Nouveau architects who worked in Barcelona (the locals called this style of architecture modernisme). Sagrada Familia was begun in 1882, and Gaudi took it over in 1883. For the next 43 years until his death, he radically redisgned it from a Neo-Gothic cathedral into the form that's still being built today. Gaudi's design is unlike anything that has ever been built or ever will be built again. It's based on a Gothic cathedral with big stone columns and arched vaults, but Gaudi was a keen observer of the natural world, and everything in the church is designed around it. Instead of the Romanesque columns in every other cathedral, Gaudi's evoke trees. The ceiling is meant to evoke a forest. The exterior is covered in naturalistic sculpture. The height of he building is beyond ambitious, with a plan for 12 bell towers, 4 evangelist towers, a Virgin Mary tower, and a Jesus tower that will be 560 feet tall over a central vault some 160 or so feet high. The whole thing is funded by donations (your admission is a donation), but I promise the visit (and a trip up a facade tower) is worth double the cost of admission. This total reliance on donations is why work went slowly until 1992 (when they instituted admission). Since 1992, the pace of construction has increased dramatically, and the former pipe dream of finishing this thing will now be reality by 2026, and the structure has been fully enclosed and usable as a basilica since 2010.

After that, we went back to Mercat Santa Caterina to get some cheese and saffron, and a caganer. After setting up a bike tour for tomorrow, we went to Passeig de Gracia to see a house (Casa Batllo) and apartment block (Casa Mila) designed by Gaudi. Both of these are now museums, both require advance tickets or very long lines (in low season, I should add), and both are almost as much as a full narrated tour and tower visit to Sagrada Familia (Casa Batllo is €21.50, Sagrada Familia is €24). If you aren't oozing cash, do Sagrada Familia, and take a picture.

We returned to the hostel for dinner this evening. For €15 per person, we got four courses (tapas, salads, main, and dessert), each with a wine pairing (rose, white, red, and a Spanish sparkling wine called cava). We're drunk now, and it's bedtime.