‘A joyful day’: final piece of Sagrada Familia’s central tower put in place | Barcelona
The final piece of the central tower of Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia has been placed in place, bringing the church to its maximum final height, 144 years after work began.
After several days when the weather was too windy to work, the top of the 17-meter-high four-sided steel and glass cross was craned into place at 11 a.m. Friday, completing the tower dedicated to Jesus Christ. Sagrada Familia, to which Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí dedicated the last years of his life, is the tallest building in Barcelona and the tallest church in the world, with a height of 172.5 meters.
As the Catalan and Vatican flags were raised, the project’s chief architect, Jordi Faulí, said: “It was a joyful day, great for all the people who made it possible.”
A ceremony to celebrate the completion of the tower, the largest of the 18 towers designed by Gaudí, will take place on June 10, the centenary of Gaudí’s death in 1926, 16 years after the church was consecrated by Pope Benedict XVI.
With the construction of a striking south-facing façade, building on the church is expected to be completed in about ten years.
It was still an emotional day for a city that has lived on Gaudi’s unfinished works for generations, and although there is much work to be done, the temple now defines Barcelona’s skyline as much as the Eiffel Tower in Paris or the Empire State Building in New York.
For decades it was a construction site open to the sky, where generations of stonemasons and carpenters worked around the tourists who financed the construction. It is only in the last 15 years since work began on the breathtakingly beautiful interior that it has begun to resemble a church more than a construction site.
Here, Gaudi’s geometric designs have created an oasis of light, with slender, tree-like columns tapering towards the roof, where the white stones of the interior stand out with their color through the stained glass windows.
The Basilica is equally loved and hated by those who live in Barcelona. George Orwell described it as “one of the most disgusting buildings in the world” and regretted that the anarchists did not blow it up when they had the chance.
However, anarchists destroyed Gaudí’s drawings and his plaster model, which was meticulously reconstructed years later. In the late 1970s, New Zealand architect Mark Burry adapted rocket design software to realize Gaudí’s design.
To those who claimed that the Basilica looked nothing like what was originally envisioned, Burry’s response was that Gaudí’s geometry was so precise that any deviation from his plan would have caused the building to collapse.
However, this is now the job of many people. There are jarring elements, particularly the Passion facade, otherwise known as the Darth Vader façade, which is the work of sculptor Josep Maria Subirachs, but overall it is clearly the work of Gaudí.
In addition to finalizing the details of the main tower, three artists (Miquel Barceló, Cristina Iglesias and Javier Marín) were commissioned to present designs for the Glory façade, which is expected to take another 10 years to complete.
The Sagrada Familia is the city’s top tourist attraction, with around 5 million visitors a year and annual revenues of around €150 million (£131 million); About half of this has been spent on construction so far.
