Barcelona, Segunda Dìa: The House that Gaudi (Half) Built

On my second day in Barcelona, I was determined to see every structure that Gaudi so much as breathed on. And where else to start but the Sagrada Famìlia, Gaudi's infamous, incomplete, incomprehensible monument to the Holy Family in stone. The Czar and I started out the morning with a lovely café con leche and croissant - which I am now able to order myself, in gloriously butchered Spanish - and then walked up to the cathedral along Passeig de Graçia, stopping by all of the Modernista buildings along the way. Some of the apartments - which people actually live in! - are incredible, like lost buildings from Atlantis, and I'll be doing a separate post on those later today.

The cathedral, in addition to being huge and awe-inspiring and breathtaking and all of those other obvious adjectives I have to get out of the way, is also hilarious. There are all this strange little details, like spires topped with cobs of corn or bushels of blackberries, turtles with columns growing out of their backs (a creation myth not entirely in line with Catholic doctrine), and the words to 'Hosanna in the Highest' wrapped lurid yellow around several towers. I can only imagine what all of the people Gaudi hit up for money for this thing thought they were patronizing -  it is a simultaneous ode to Christ, sea creatures, and the agricultural glories of Spain (to which I would myself erect a staggering monument - where else can you find cherries for two euro a kilo?).

Given its enormous size, it was somewhat difficult to fit the whole thing into one photo frame. I tried, backing away as far as possible and trying not to fall into the curiously large and curiously green and scummy pond behind me, but it was a lost cause. Instead I took several dozen pictures of the Nativity façade, little knowing that they would lead to innumerable future headaches as I tried to piece them all together. Oh, if I had only known then what I know now! But I succeeded in the end: behold my triumphant victory over Photoshop and the interminable mockery of my peers.

This behemoth has been under construction since 1882 and is allegedly going to be finished in 2026, but I don't believe them for a second. Why settle for a mere hundred-and-forty-four years when you could go for a solid hundred-and-fifty? There is glory in round numbers, after all.

There were about that many people in line to get in, so while we waited, I amused myself by taking pictures of some of the elaborately detailed metal doors, which are on the Passion façade, the side of the church featured in the first picture. I love all of the details included here, and the myriad ways in which the metal was molded: there are embossings, engravings, impressions, and many more technical terms that I don't know for making copper look cool. It really just looks like someone took a sheet of copper and went wild pressing the contents of a fleamarket into it. The Que es la veritat? door is my favorite.

I would argue that the inside of the cathedral, as bare of a construction scene it may be, is even more impressive than the outside. Even though it's even more of a construction site than the exterior, the huge, vaulted ceilings, towering columns, and echoing spaces of the nave are the manmade, indoor equivalent to being on top of a mountain looking over hundreds of miles of open air. I felt like a sacreligious ant.

Only two of the gargantuan - I am running out of synonyms for 'big' - stained glass windows are complete, but there are many, many windows waiting to be filled in. Once they're finished, standing in the nave is going to be like swimming in a rainbow, every conceivable color of light setting the entire space aglow. In the upper righthand picture below, you can see a window work-in-progress, which is what most of them look like.

It's actually quite a short walk through the inside of the cathedral, since most of it is filled with heavy duty construction equipment and is cordoned-off with aluminum fencing. Unsurprisingly, the vaulted ceilings are quite good at amplifying the whirring sounds of drills, although the dulcet sounds of sledgehammers did not quite approach the majesty of organ music and angelic trumpets.

Once we emerged from the light of God into the light of day, it was back to another queue, this time for the lift to take us all the way to the top of one of the turrets. A staggering amount of architectural detail was visible in the alcove where we waited: rows upon rows of lacy stone trim; tiny, twining flowers; elaborately wrought Gothic script. Stone demons and nefarious toads crawled along the bottom of the arches, while an unnamed bishop stood above us writing his Christmas list ('Item one: nefarious toad repellant. Item two: socks for mother. Item three: more construction workers.' I feel like priests placidly limit themselves to three things in the interest of piety.)

The view from the top of the stairs was well worth the two euros we paid for the elevator. I do not begrudge them this money, as I want to see this building finished in my lifetime and every ripped-off tourist helps.) I took many, many pictures, including these, shot while leaning against what I think was a pineapple stuffed with turtledoves. That thing that looks like a field of grass, that is liquid seaweed.