The building work on La Sagrada Familia was restarted several years ago. It's a strange thing, walking round a
cathedral that is a building site, when you are more used to ones that have been crumbling for over 500 years. Standing under the open sky, between the giant
spires that lean across you, it's a shock to think of the scale of a
religious building in this era. (Though perhaps it's being finished now because of its
architect, not its original purpose.)
It's a glorious structure, one that causes
vertigo from the ground, or from the lofty, delicate
walkways between the spires. It's a crazy jumble of
details, from the doorway arch covered with hundred of little enthroned
saints, to the pillars sitting on
giant turtles, to the way that the stones look melting
candlewax from a distance. The level of detail is astonishing. It's a giant treasure box.
It's fantastically
ugly, and astonishingly
beautiful.
If you go down into the
crypt you can see the model made for the
monastery that he designed outside
Barcelona, using bags of
sand and
string to work out the loads and angles for the arches, showing his unique approach to architecture.