March 9: La Sagrada Familia

By Nicole Schwarz

What’s 566 feet tall, covered in fruit, and held up by turtles? Basílica de la Sagrada Família!

The experience of beholding Sagrada Familia for the first time is breathtaking, extraordinary – even a bit dizzying. As the eyes adjust and begin to place more detail, it’s striking just how much is being said by the building, and how many stories are being told. Sagrada Familia is Gaudi’s life’s work – one of his first projects, and his very last. And it shows. You can see devotion in every single stone. From the rise of life in the east to the fall of life in the west, from the tale of Jesus’s life to the presence of Mary throughout, the church is a marvel. A true love letter to life, to nature, to powers larger than us. The finishing of Jesus’s tower in 2026, on the 100 year anniversary of Gaudi’s death, officially marked Sagrada Familia as the tallest church on the planet. But even so, it’s not taller than the nearby Montjuic, because the architect believed that no work of man should be higher than the work of God. More than a feat of art and architecture, the church is a true testament to human devotion and what can be accomplished if you have a talent, and if you surrender wholly to that talent. It is more than fitting that the church is finally being ‘finished’ (as finished as it can be) in the year of Gaudi. I can’t help but wonder if he’d be proud of the way that countless artists, designers and craftspeople have taken his work forward in the last hundred years. His soul is certainly felt around the masterpiece. Not a bad final resting place.