Had he not been derailed in life by a streetcar, Gaudí still would not have lived to see his masterwork complete, a project he forecasted would last generations. He spent 43 years working on the temple after taking over and completely overhauling the original Neo-Gothic project in 1883. During the years leading up to his death in 1926, he worked exclusively on the temple, after which he was interred in its crypt. “For the first time since I had been in Barcelona I went to look at the cathedral, a modern cathedral, and one of the most hideous buildings in the world. It has four crenellated spires exactly the shape of hock bottles. Unlike most of the churches in Barcelona, it was not damaged during the Revolution–it was spared because of its ‘artistic value,’ people said. I think the Anarchists showed bad taste in not blowing it up when they had the chance.” George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia When the temple of the Holy Family is ultimately finished (estimates put the completion date another 35 years off), it will stand as one of the great symbolic wonders in the world, a moving and controversial manifestation of religion as interpreted through a Modernist’s eye that has inspired both praise and condemnation. The American architect Louis Sullivan declared it “the greatest piece of creative architecture in the last 25 years. It is spirit symbolized in stone.” Twelve bell towers, each 75m(246 feet) tall, will represent the Apostles in groups of four on each of the three façades. Another four representing the evangelists at 125 m (410 feet) tall each will surround a 140-m (460-foot) tower of the Virgin topped with a star. The tallest tower, at 170 m (558 feet) high in the center of the temple, will be dedicated to Christ. “There is nothing in the world like it. It is Disney whimsicality raised to the level of soaring nobility. It is metaphysical conceit humanized with crockets and pompons. It is scrawl and mysticism, vision and fancy, an evanescent dream hammered into sempiternal solidity.” Anthony Burgess Work was reinitiated on the temple in 1952 based on a scale model with explanations of symbolism the architect had left behind. Gaudì’s specifications for the construction techniques to be used were burned along with his crypt during the Spanish Civil War, causing much consternation since. Thus far, eight of the apostle towers have been built corresponding with the nativity and passion façade. During his lifetime Gaudí saw the near-completion of just one of the towers, as well as the nativity façade, which depicts the birth and childhood of Christ. Its three portals correspond to the Holy Trinity, above which angels sound trumpets and doves representing faith roost in an emerald-colored cypress tree. For the sculptures of the nativity façade, Gaudí used actual people and one donkey to create the molds. In his search for the perfect ass, Gaudí was presented with the finest donkeys Barcelona had to offer, but he rejected each of them and instead chose a haggard, shrunken donkey which he saw one day leading a sand cart down the road. When questioned, the architect replied, “Not one of the figures you see here in stone is imaginary; they all stand here just as I have seen them in reality... Mary, with the child of Jesus, was not to be mounted on a fine strong animal, but on one poor, old and weary, and surely one which had something kindly in its face and understood what it was all about.” Such motivations breathe life into the stationary forms of the temple at almost every vantage point. This seems to have been lost on Josep Subirach, the architect who has undertaken the Passion façade and adorned it with soulless, robot-like sculptures depicting figures from the Holy Supper through the Crucifixion and Entombment. One beacon of hope, though, is the 4 x 4 cryptogram which Subirach, and not Gaudí, created. Each of its rows, diagonals and columns add up to 33, the age of Christ upon his death. The last to be completed will be the spectacular main entrance of the Glory façade, complete with clouds and allegorical inscriptions representing Christ’s ascension into heaven. As the Sagrada Familia has relied strictly on private funding throughout its existence, your paid admission helps to fund the ongoing construction. It is a subtle guilt trip, but each euro brings the collaborators closer to actually making that 2041 completion date when all those tacky skyscrapers can be removed from the Barcelona skyline, as emblematic as they seem to have become. Once inside, you can wander around the Museu del Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Familia, an exhibition detailing the construction techniques and materials used in the temple, or hike over 200 steps (I lost count) to the top of the nativity towers for a look at its concrete and rebar innards. There will undoubtedly be a long line, making for a slow go – two, three steps at a time up a narrow spiraling corridor with plenty of interesting graffiti carved in the walls on the way up. An elevator also accesses the top, though its lines are twice as long since it can only handle three people at a time.