Sagrada Familia Tickets Online

Initially, the architect Antonio Gaudi had nothing to do with it at all: the temple was built with the support of the «Spiritual Association of Devotees of St. Joseph» under the leadership of Francisco de Paula del Villar at Lozano, who planned to build a cathedral in the Neo-Gothic style.

In 1882, the first stone was laid, but a year later Francisco quarreled with the association and the construction was entrusted to a young architect Antonio Gaudi, who at that time could only boast of designing a workshop for bleaching cotton.

There are several theories as to why he was chosen for this position. According to one of them (more romantic), the chairman of the Association dreamed that a man with blue eyes should build a temple, and according to a more plausible one, the customers chose a promising but little-known architect because he simply cost them less.

However, later the estimate was exceeded several times, so the plan was not very successful. But all further construction was based on the idea that the temple should be created by people, that everything would be in the hands of God and human will.

At the same time, all donations must be anonymous, without implying any advertising, and neither the Spanish government nor private companies take part in them: the Sagrada Familia is created on donations from parishioners.

Thus, the construction of the temple has been going on for almost 140 years, architects and technologies have changed, but the idea remained unchanged: to create a church unlike others, with a unique architecture and in harmony with nature and God.

Antonio was very inspired by the project and enthusiastically embarked on it. When the construction of the crypt (underground vaulted rooms located under the altar and choral parts of the temple) was completed, a huge donation unexpectedly arrived and Gaudi decided to completely revise the project.

At the same time, the architect did not have a complete, final plan, he treated the Sagrada Familia as his child and believed that he should grow and develop freely (looking ahead, I would like to note that already in our time, when using computer technology, it was proved that intuition did not fail the architect and everything was designed and built with amazing precision).

Gaudi drew inspiration from nature and that is why the temple is unlike any in the world: inside you can feel like in a fairy forest, and indeed, sometimes you just forget that you are in a functioning church.

The construction was started from the facade of the Nativity (the Passion of Christ and the Resurrection were also planned), because the architect did not want to immediately scare the residents with death, heavy and terrible events.

As a true believer, Antonio could not allow the creation of human hands to be higher than the creations of God, so the height of the temple towers was planned to be one meter lower than the highest point in Barcelona at that time, Montjuic Mountain.

Gaudi devoted more than 40 years to the construction of the temple, while tirelessly repeating that he had nowhere to hurry. «My customer is God, and he is in no hurry.» During his lifetime, one of the towers of the Nativity facade was completed and the Passion Facade project was created.

After the architect’s death in 1926, the construction was continued by his students and associates according to the remaining drawings. During the Civil War of 1936-1939, some of the models were destroyed, but later something was restored, and now with the help of new technologies, the construction is nearing its completion.