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Another brick in the wall for the Sagrada Família, Spain's 'three-century' unfinished cathedral
22/04/2021
A FURTHER key part of Barcelona's iconic Sagrada Família cathedral has been slotted into place, with the final touches and embellishments due to be added over the course of 2021.
Constructors are back on track and expect to meet their deadline of December for the Torre de la Mare de Déu ('Virgin's Tower', or literally translated, 'Tower of the Mother of God'), after long-term plans for Europe's most famous unfinished building were scuppered due to the pandemic.
The internationally-loved landmark is quite possibly the world's longest-running building project: Since the foundation stones were first laid, work has never stopped for more than a few months at a time and always due to extreme circumstances, such as last year's lockdown; and yet, in that time, construction engineers, planners, and visiting tourists have been born, lived to a ripe old age and died from natural causes.
And the work is still in progress.
In fact, anyone in the building industry seeking job security or a position for life could do worse than apply to join the team tackling the Sagrada Família.
The long-term goal was to have the cathedral 100% complete according to the original design of the architect, Antoni Gaudí, in 2026, the 100th anniversary year of his cruelly-ironic death after he was run over by a bus whilst crossing the road to his own creation.
But delays caused by pandemic-related restrictions have not been the only setback; since Covid-19 first hit Europe, tourist and visitor numbers have been so badly hit that ticket sales, which have been funding the works, as well as overheads and staff salaries, for decades, have been far too low to allow any progress to be made, meaning the initial completion deadline is now open to conjecture and could be literally any time in the future.
Depending upon how things pick up, it could well be that the cathedral is fully finished by the 105th or 110th anniversary of Gaudí's demise.
Even then, cultural historians far into the future will not know whether to call it a 19th-, 20th- or 21st-century structure, but will definitely struggle to fit any of its architectural elements neatly into the typical styles of any era over these three.
Indeed, the Sagrada Família is about as atypical as you can get – evidence of Gaudí's wacky, highly-unconventional approach to building architecture is clearly on display at the psychedelic mosaïc Parc Güell complex a few streets away, and in his red-and-green-tiled spire-shaped restaurant in Comillas, Cantabria.
Delightfully weird and tastefully crazy, even visitors who are not usually overawed by church or cathedral architecture find the Sagrada Família a source of intrigue; it is not common to see mass taking place beneath a cubist stained-glass Virgin Mary next to a cement-mixer, or towers that look like a cross between pock-marked cacti and red-hot pokers, but Barcelona residents have been very used to seeing all this on their horizon for the last five generations.
What's been happening while the region stayed at home
Anyone outside the immediate surroundings of the Barcelona metropolitan area would not have seen the latest addition to the cathedral, given that Catalunya shut the borders of all districts within its four provinces several months ago and is not likely to reopen them until the second week in May.
But on Tuesday, the pinnacle of the 'Virgin's Tower' – set to be the second-tallest, after the 'Jesus Tower' ('Torre de Jesús') at 127 metres – was fitted, creating the basic framework, which will now be gradually cemented and plastered and decorated over the next seven or eight months.
The pinnacle was built in a workshop, and the 12-point star which will top the tower is also being constructed at ground level – which is necessary, since, even though it will look like a small Christmas-tree adornment that you could easily miss if you don't look up, it will measure 7.5 metres in diameter.
In fact, the pinnacle itself is 11 metres high, made from reinforced concrete.
Each face of the 3D star will have lights fitted inside it, and each of the 12 points will be glassed over, so it will glow brightly over the city at night, resembling the mythical star the Magi followed to reach Bethlehem and Christ's birthplace.
The star itself will be supported by six criss-crossing concrete beams covered in a multitude of light-reflecting pale-blue and white tiles, emerging as three overlapping posts at the summit, set within a crown-shaped base, so it looks as though the top part had been peeled.
And the whole tower will be a long, thin, pointy cone-shape.
Last year did, in fact, generate some ticket sales – enough to put aside €17 million, net of all other costs involved in the cathedral's upkeep, towards building works in 2021; quite a feat, considering that it is not an expensive landmark to visit in comparison with similarly-famous sites elsewhere in Europe, but still only 17% of what would have been saved up in a typical year.
After 135 years of ongoing construction works, with a minimum of another five and probably even longer to go, the delays are considered neither here nor there.
And the great advantage to this unusual situation is that the Gaudí cathedral is a tourism attraction that can be visited again and again, as it will always look different to the last time you saw it – it will be many years before day-trippers and holidaymakers can truly say they have 'done' the Sagrada Família.
After all, if you go to visit the Colisseo in Rome, the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids, or Machu Picchu, they will all be exactly the same as last time when you return to them – Barcelona's inimitable cathedral is rather more dynamic and is set to be so for some time yet.
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A FURTHER key part of Barcelona's iconic Sagrada Família cathedral has been slotted into place, with the final touches and embellishments due to be added over the course of 2021.
Constructors are back on track and expect to meet their deadline of December for the Torre de la Mare de Déu ('Virgin's Tower', or literally translated, 'Tower of the Mother of God'), after long-term plans for Europe's most famous unfinished building were scuppered due to the pandemic.
The internationally-loved landmark is quite possibly the world's longest-running building project: Since the foundation stones were first laid, work has never stopped for more than a few months at a time and always due to extreme circumstances, such as last year's lockdown; and yet, in that time, construction engineers, planners, and visiting tourists have been born, lived to a ripe old age and died from natural causes.
And the work is still in progress.
In fact, anyone in the building industry seeking job security or a position for life could do worse than apply to join the team tackling the Sagrada Família.
The long-term goal was to have the cathedral 100% complete according to the original design of the architect, Antoni Gaudí, in 2026, the 100th anniversary year of his cruelly-ironic death after he was run over by a bus whilst crossing the road to his own creation.
But delays caused by pandemic-related restrictions have not been the only setback; since Covid-19 first hit Europe, tourist and visitor numbers have been so badly hit that ticket sales, which have been funding the works, as well as overheads and staff salaries, for decades, have been far too low to allow any progress to be made, meaning the initial completion deadline is now open to conjecture and could be literally any time in the future.
Depending upon how things pick up, it could well be that the cathedral is fully finished by the 105th or 110th anniversary of Gaudí's demise.
Even then, cultural historians far into the future will not know whether to call it a 19th-, 20th- or 21st-century structure, but will definitely struggle to fit any of its architectural elements neatly into the typical styles of any era over these three.
Indeed, the Sagrada Família is about as atypical as you can get – evidence of Gaudí's wacky, highly-unconventional approach to building architecture is clearly on display at the psychedelic mosaïc Parc Güell complex a few streets away, and in his red-and-green-tiled spire-shaped restaurant in Comillas, Cantabria.
Delightfully weird and tastefully crazy, even visitors who are not usually overawed by church or cathedral architecture find the Sagrada Família a source of intrigue; it is not common to see mass taking place beneath a cubist stained-glass Virgin Mary next to a cement-mixer, or towers that look like a cross between pock-marked cacti and red-hot pokers, but Barcelona residents have been very used to seeing all this on their horizon for the last five generations.
What's been happening while the region stayed at home
Anyone outside the immediate surroundings of the Barcelona metropolitan area would not have seen the latest addition to the cathedral, given that Catalunya shut the borders of all districts within its four provinces several months ago and is not likely to reopen them until the second week in May.
But on Tuesday, the pinnacle of the 'Virgin's Tower' – set to be the second-tallest, after the 'Jesus Tower' ('Torre de Jesús') at 127 metres – was fitted, creating the basic framework, which will now be gradually cemented and plastered and decorated over the next seven or eight months.
The pinnacle was built in a workshop, and the 12-point star which will top the tower is also being constructed at ground level – which is necessary, since, even though it will look like a small Christmas-tree adornment that you could easily miss if you don't look up, it will measure 7.5 metres in diameter.
In fact, the pinnacle itself is 11 metres high, made from reinforced concrete.
Each face of the 3D star will have lights fitted inside it, and each of the 12 points will be glassed over, so it will glow brightly over the city at night, resembling the mythical star the Magi followed to reach Bethlehem and Christ's birthplace.
The star itself will be supported by six criss-crossing concrete beams covered in a multitude of light-reflecting pale-blue and white tiles, emerging as three overlapping posts at the summit, set within a crown-shaped base, so it looks as though the top part had been peeled.
And the whole tower will be a long, thin, pointy cone-shape.
Last year did, in fact, generate some ticket sales – enough to put aside €17 million, net of all other costs involved in the cathedral's upkeep, towards building works in 2021; quite a feat, considering that it is not an expensive landmark to visit in comparison with similarly-famous sites elsewhere in Europe, but still only 17% of what would have been saved up in a typical year.
After 135 years of ongoing construction works, with a minimum of another five and probably even longer to go, the delays are considered neither here nor there.
And the great advantage to this unusual situation is that the Gaudí cathedral is a tourism attraction that can be visited again and again, as it will always look different to the last time you saw it – it will be many years before day-trippers and holidaymakers can truly say they have 'done' the Sagrada Família.
After all, if you go to visit the Colisseo in Rome, the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids, or Machu Picchu, they will all be exactly the same as last time when you return to them – Barcelona's inimitable cathedral is rather more dynamic and is set to be so for some time yet.
Related Topics
You may also be interested in ...
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