The final part of the central tower of Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia has been erected, with the church reaching its maximum final height 144 years after work began.
The upper part of the 17-meter-high four-sided steel and glass cross was put into position at 11 a.m. on Friday, completing the tower dedicated to Jesus Christ, after several days of wind that made it impossible to work. At 172.5 meters high, the Sagrada Familia is Barcelona’s tallest building and the world’s tallest church, to which Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí dedicated the latter part of his life.
As the Catalan and Vatican flags were raised, Jordi Folli, the project’s chief architect, said: “It’s a happy day, wonderful for all the people who made it possible.”
A ceremony to mark the completion of the tower – an 18-tall designed by Gaudi – will take place on 10 June, the centenary of Gaudi’s death in 1926, 16 years after the church was consecrated by Pope Benedict XVI.
The end of the building at the church is expected in about a decade with the construction of a magnificent south-facing facade.
It was an emotional day for a city that has lived with Gaudí’s unfinished work for generations, and while much work remains, the temple now defines Barcelona’s skyline as much as the Eiffel Tower in Paris or the Empire State Building in New York.
For decades it was an open-air building site, where generations of stonemasons and carpenters worked around the tourists who eventually funded the construction. Only in the last 15 years, since work began on the breathtakingly beautiful interior, has it felt more like a church than a building site.
Here Gaudí’s geometric patterns create an oasis of light, with delicate, tree-like columns tapering to the ceiling, the white stone of the interior picked up in colors by the stained glass windows.
Those who live in Barcelona love and hate the basilica in equal measure. George Orwell described it as “one of the most terrifying buildings in the world” and lamented that the anarchists did not blow it up when they had the chance.
However, anarchists destroyed Gaudi’s drawings and a plaster model, which was painstakingly reconstructed years later. In the late 1970s, New Zealand architect Mark Bury adapted Rocket Design software to realize Gaudi’s design.
To those who argue that the basilica is nothing as originally envisioned, Burri’s response is that Gaudí’s geometry was so precise that any deviation from his plan would cause the building to collapse.
But it is now a task in the hands of many. There are elements of the jar, particularly the Darth Vader obverse, the Passion obverse known to be the work of sculptor Josep Maria Subirachs, and overall it is undoubtedly the work of Gaudi.
In addition to finalizing the details of the main tower, three artists – Miquel Barceló, Cristina Iglesias and Javier Marin – have been commissioned to submit designs for the facade of the Glory, which is expected to take another 10 years to complete.
The Sagrada Familia is the city’s main tourist attraction, with around 5 million visitors a year and annual revenue of around €150m (£131m), half of which has so far been spent on construction.
