Jason's Travel Blog

Barcelona, Spain - Part 2: La Sagrada Familia

La Sagrada Familia or the Temple of the Holy Family has become a symbol of the city of Barcelona. It was and is largely the result of the vision of architect Antonio Gaudi, whose imprint has been left all over the city (as you will see in this and the following posts).

Gaudi was not the original designer of the church, which began construction in 1882. Gaudi took over design two years later, and while Gaudi died in 1926, the church is still under construction. It is known as the world's most visited consturction site.

Conservative estimates place the date of completion at least 20 years away. That will be a construction time of approximately 140 years, for those doing the math. For someone witnessing Boston's Big Dig project, that seems like a very reasonable timeframe.

It's hard to capture the scale of this piece of work in words or these small pictures. Gaudi design three massive facades. One each representing the Nativity,



The Passion,




and the Glories. Each facade tells the entire story of these three chapters in the life of Christ. The three facades are each topped with four towering spires, for a total of twelve (one for each of the apostles. There will be four additional towers representing the Evangilists, and one massive cantral tower (over 500 feet tall) representing Jesus.

The Nativity and the Passion facades are essentially complete, and work on the facade of the Glories is essentially just beginning.

After Gaudi died, his original plans and models were destroyed by anarchists in the Spanish Civil War during the 1930s. This halted work for many years, but the plans have been reconstructed and work continues. There is no public money being spent on the construction, and the costs are now primarily paid by the tourist fees and private donations.

The interior of the church is largely incomplete as well, and at the moment it looks like something out of science fiction.



But also has some beautiful stained glass:




In order to gain access to the interior, you can pay 7 euros for a ticket. If you want to go up into the massive spires, you have two choices. You can pay an extra 2 euros for a ticket to the elevator, or you can climb the stairs. Before you say "I'm not paying to use an elevator, I suggest you review:

(with flash)



(actual light)



Just for reference, the white round thing in the bottom of the first picture is the toe of my sneaker. It gives you an idea of how narrow these steps were. No hand rail on the inside either, in case you're wondering. I've climbed the sprial stairs up the inside of the Bunker Hill monument. These are about twice as narrow the sprial is much tighter, and these towers are much taller.

Still, it's a good workout, and I saved 2 euros. Besides, if I had taken the elevator, I wouldn't have seen some of these details:








Taking a closer look at the facades, there is an amazong amount of detail in this work. Each facade is like a huge mural telling a story. Here are some detial pictures of the Nativity Facade, showing Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus, being watched over by angels:





The facade of the Passion is even more amazing:













Finally, one of my guidebooks mentioned that seeing the site lit up at night was not to be missed, so I went back after dark and snapped a few shots. It was impressive.








More to come from Barcelona...next up, more Gaudi...

posted by Jason Ward @ 8:06 PM 0 comments

Barcelona, Spain - Part 1

My next trip is to Barcelona, Spain.



I've decided to break this one up into a few postings, because there was a lot to see, and putting it all in one post would be veeeeeeeeeeeeeery long (I took over 500 pictures, but I won't subject you to all of them).

Unlike Leiden or Amstrerdam in previous posts, Barcelona is most certainly a city. It reminds me in many ways of London. The greater metropolitan area has a population of over 4.5 million. There are some sections of the city that appear to have changed very little in centuries, while other sections resemble most cities anywhere in the world. While it is customary to greet people in Spanish, most people speak at least some English. Barcelona is also the capital of the Catalonia region, and many residents also speak Catalan (I would not have known this in advance if it weren't for my friend Dave Neyhart, who married a woman from a Catalan family).

I was staying outside the main part of the City at the Barcelona Hilton, to attend a conference. This is north and west of the city center.

There are a few options for getting around Barcelona. Taxis are plentiful and there is also an extensive public transportation system. I bought a multi-day pass and did most of my travelling on the subway system, the Metro. The Metro was efficient and clean for the most part, although there are a number of station undergoing maintanence work at the moment. Another option that I would recommend for touring the city would be one of the bus tour services. The one that I got information on was the Bus Turistic, which I saw at every spot I wanted to see, and offers a pretty good deal. It's a double-decker bus that makes regular runs around the city, stopping at more than 40 sights on three separate loops. You can hop on and off at your leisure, using a 1 or 2-day ticket, and transfer between loops at various points along the way. A ticket on the Bus also provides discounts at a number of the sight in the city. In addition, the Barcelona Tourism board offers the Barcelona Card, which provides additional discounts in and around the city.

I used two books this time around, another book from Loneley Planet, and one from Knopf City Guides, which are great because they are basically a series of foldout maps with listings the apply to each section of the map for food, sights, and shopping.





First stop on the tour - La Sagrada Familia...

posted by Jason Ward @ 10:23 AM 1 comments