La Sagrada Familia

Inspiring, mind-blowing, and well worth it on every level

Who has two thumbs and doesn’t feel like he needs to see any more European churches?

…

You guessed it, This Guy.

That’s what I thought before I went on a solo trip to La Sagrada Familia, the 100-year work-in-progress brainchild of genius Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi. But instead of rushing through the building and getting out in a tight 30 minutes, I spent over three times as long ogling at the masterpiece above me. As I progressed through my stay, I was hit by the weight of religion and its ability to inspire monumental pieces of art. I was enthralled by the details and the fact that somehow they had included every element possible in the design. Lastly, I was fascinated with the man who took over a project that he knew he would never see completed.

I left in awe of what those who aspire to greatness can possibly achieve and a renewed interest in seeing the famous sights of the world. In short, my expectations were blown out of the water.

La Sagrada Familia in all its glory

What is it?

Basically, La Sagrada Familia is the most intricately designed Catholic Church in the world. It is a project that has been in progress for over one hundred years with a (scheduled) completion date in 2026. Its main architect, Antoni Gaudi, is the most famous architect in all of Spain and one of the biggest worldwide names in architecture, period.

The building is a spectacle for just about every reason imaginable. But let’s say you didn’t want to read a list of everything I found exciting about it and asked me to narrow it down to three. Those three would be:

• Size. The Church is a square city block in area with towers that will one day reach 172.5M high. The inside goes up so far that to see the upper reaches you have to use Augmented Reality which takes you up into the ceiling. Everything about this building is on a scale that I don’t recognize with anything done in materials not called glass and steel.

• Detail. Every last (finished) square inch of this building is precisely designed and perfectly executed. From the Nativity scenes detailed on the eastern entrance to the mosaics on the lower tower, everything, I mean everything, is thought through and beautifully done.

• Design. The design of each facade, the interior, the naves, the crypt, everything has its own style but it still feels like it flows together as a cohesive piece. I don’t know jack about architecture but it seemed to me, a rube, that the ability to tie in all of these different styles is worthy of acclaim on this aspect alone.

Instead of giving the full written tour guide here, I will say two things. First, if you’re in Barcelona you should really go see it and either take a tour or listen to every last second of the audio guide, which was fantastically done. Second, if you’re geographically challenged but want to learn more I would recommend this video which gives a great background on Gaudi himself, the building, and the process in which it was built.

While it is an architectural accomplishment that is hardly rivaled in all of Europe, let alone the world, what struck me hardest was how much great art that religion has inspired across the world and how the details of the Catholic Religion come into play in this specific building.

Religion as a Source of Great Inspiration

As I went through the building, one of the thoughts that kept popping up for me was the true spectacle of the Catholic religion and its (and other religions’) ability to inspire truly monumental works of art. These stories inspired people to “honor” the deities that were extolled there within and provided an abundance of motivation to build great things. Religion is not the only motivator for building great works of man but if you look around the world you cannot deny that many of man’s greatest artistic accomplishments have been done in the name of God (whichever one may be applicable). Be it the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, the Pyramids in Egypt, or the Sistine Chapel, many of mankind’s greatest artistic accomplishments are those that were inspired by religion.

Religion not only inspires ambitious projects, but it also provides a rich story with which to pull details from and creating a plethora of inspiration from which to work.

The Bible is proliferated with characters that have their own backstories and roles to play in the larger narrative. Across La Sagrada Familia, those people and their roles were well represented in big (the towers being themed after each of the evangelists) and small (the three wise men from the east depicted above the doors on the Nativity facade) ways.

In a strange way, this felt slightly modern. These inclusions from religious texts strewn across the church were not unlike watching a Harry Potter movie. When a character that you recognize shows up in the film, you get excited because you know why they are in there and why they are important. When artists adapt scripture into their chosen medium, they can include these 'easter eggs,' creating more surface area for the audience to engage with.

Walking through La Sagrada Familia made me internalize the importance of religion with all the subtlety of the ACME anvil landing on Wile E. Coyote’s head. Religion is a central motivator for great art and we have much of the human-created beauty to thank for it, whether we like it or believe in it.

Once the overwhelming Catholicism of the thing started to wear off, I was able to appreciate the detail of the building. This triggered another thought: every piece of art that I consider to be truly great and lasting has been minutely detailed.

The Importance of Detail in Truly Great Works

Walking around and then into the Sagrada Familia made me realize just how detailed it was. Every one of man's greatest artistic achievements with which I am remotely familiar are incredibly and oftentimes unbelievably detailed. It seems to me more and more that to make something truly lasting you have to be obsessed with each and every minute facet of the piece.

I loved so much detail about the Church, but my top three were the following:

• The measurements throughout the design are specific. For example, the main tower is 172.5m tall, which is just shorter than the Montserrat Mountain behind Barcelona. Gaudi believed the works of man should never aspire to be greater than those of God.

• The stained glass windows were colored based on which direction they faced. Those on the eastern had cooler “sunrise” hues and those on the western wall had fiery “sunset” tones.

• Almost randomly, there is a Magic Square on the Passion facade, or a 4×4 matrix wherein each horizontal, vertical, and diagonal row adds up to 33, Christ’s age at his supposed death.

La Sagrada Familia is a rare example that has been under construction for over a hundred years, but there are other, more modern artists that exemplify this type of detailed labor in the artistic world.

As readers of this blog know well by now, David Foster Wallace’s magnum opus was Infinite Jest. Many commendations were given for the technical perfection of his writing, but one compliment stood above the rest. That compliment was that addicts and former addicts who read the book said it was the most detailed representation of addiction that they had ever seen in any form of media. DFW wasn’t himself an addict, but to make sure he was properly capturing the perspective of an addict, he spent two years in and out of a halfway house speaking with recovering addicts to make sure that his instantiation of the disease was accurately captured.

That level of commitment to detail separates the good from the great, and it is that level of detail that La Sagrada Familia has by the (literal) truckload. Many of us forgo that level of detail in our own work and for that reason we create works that are short lived.

Life is Short (a great and lasting reminder)

The story of the end of Antoni Gaudí’s life was a tragic one. One day, as he was walking in the street, a streetcar ran him down. Because he dressed like a pauper, people thought he was a homeless guy, so no one called an ambulance (terribly poor look for Spaniards of the time if you ask me). When someone finally called an ambulance and they took him to the hospital, it was only then they recognized him but it was too late to do anything and he died the next day.

The man with the vision to take on a project that he would never see finished, “God’s Architect,” got killed by a bus.

While he knew that he was growing trees in whose shade he would never stand, he could have never imagined that his life would come to such an abrupt end. It was only by his foresight, his knowledge that he wouldn’t be around to finish the building that he was able to leave sufficiently detailed plans for work to continue for another one hundred years after his passing. The takeaway here isn’t just to say that “Wow, that’s a really depressing story.” No. The takeaway is to admire the man who started such an ambitious journey no matter how far he would be able to take it.

I visited this proof of human achievement, and that’s what stayed with me to this day, even a month later. It’s that Gaudi was just a guy. Just a person. Just like you and me. But he started working on something and made it his life’s work. Because he was able to inspire those after him to continue on, the world is a far more beautiful and interesting place.

There is only a single lesson: you have to start now. You have but one life to live and if you aren’t acting as if it could end at any point you may miss your chance to work on the thing that brings you true satisfaction and joy.

The specifics don't matter; what's important is that it challenges and inspires you. Yes, that may feel a bit corny but it's true. We all marvel at greatness like I marveled at La Sagrada Familia, but we rarely consider that this potential lies within all of us. We just have to start now.