So I took these a couple days ago during our visit to
La Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's last/greatest unfinished masterpiece. It's almost been 100 years since the process was started, and the community continues to work. Each generation has been provided with an opportunity to add to its appearance, and all have tried to keep to Gaudi's original wishes and aesthetic. What is complete now is nothing less than unbelievable. Not that Sean and I want a cathedral for a home, but there are plenty of projects and ideas by Gaudi that we'd love to have incorporated into our own home some day. Sean's commentary below... I deny any complicity in these rantings. All the words below are his. I just wanted to take pretty pictures. I'm just going to sit back and let the Catholics have him...
Antoni Guadí's huge cathedral is so sturdy, they are using the towers as cranes! No kidding! Also notice the scooters. We're still in Europe, folks.
An unruly mob has settled in for its daily siege of La Sagrada Familia. La sigh.
There were stormtroopers in the expurgated Bible, but they were expurgated, which is kind of like literary excommunication. But Gaudí, using his wizard-like powers of resurrection, resurrected the stormtroopers. Here they wait in suspended animation, for the 2nd coming of our lord Jesus Gaudí, aka Gaud.
I suppose, if you're a stone person, you think other people come from stones, too, so you might one day just walk up to a stone and tug on it, and not be all that surprised when a person emerges. That's the miracle of La Sagrada Familia.
Jesus, we can see you.
The top is not a sun, it's a rotating cross, and the three balls aren't balls, they're representative of the holy trinity, and the 18 little figures aren't little figures, oh, wait. Yes they are. But the other stuff isn't what you think it is. That's also the miracle of Gaud. Everything means something else.
All kidding aside, this place is unreal. After all of the cathedrals we've made a point to visit on this trip, going back to the Gothic and Baroque stuff is going to be difficult. Gaudí really did his own thing, and I'm surprised that I don't see more explicitly derivative works out in the world at large. Except on playgrounds.
All kidding back front and center. It's the flying mummy! A very important story in the Bible, the flying mummy parachutes from holy planes to deliver the word of mummification to all the little mummies of the world.
Sometimes, in life, you feel lost in the woods. Unable to find your way. But it's just a metaphor. Until you come to La Sagrada Familia. Now you're lost in a granite forest, for real, and your metaphorical crisis has just benefited from a miraculous shift in perspective. You're not lost in your life; you're lost in a building!
With a camera! So you take pictures as breadcrumbs, and once you're out of the "woods", you can look back and say something like "I'm glad I went through that, but I don't want to go through that again." And this is the story of why people draw maps of their churches in the back of their Bibles.
Maybe I should go this way? It seems to go straight. Moving slowly, I shouldn't set off the motion detectors...
Some of them are windows. Some of them are doors. One of those sentences is false. Some doors glow. Go.
That's a decorative staircase, that is.
We totally want our own hobbit house. 900 ish sqft., and it looks so quaint!
Gaudí designed this confessional.
This is a scale model of the upstairs in the crypt. The tour goes through the crypt. Where Gaudí is buried.
Here's a
link to an explanation of this inverted hanging model, although, now that I think of it, the name sort of says it all...
Click on this one to see all the little details. Gaudí was actually alive to see some of this one done, and, once again, as we learned from our audioguide, everything means something.
Look! A way out!
Antoni Guadí's huge cathedral is so sturdy, they are using the towers as cranes! No kidding! Also notice the scooters. We're still in Europe, folks.
An unruly mob has settled in for its daily siege of La Sagrada Familia. La sigh.
There were stormtroopers in the expurgated Bible, but they were expurgated, which is kind of like literary excommunication. But Gaudí, using his wizard-like powers of resurrection, resurrected the stormtroopers. Here they wait in suspended animation, for the 2nd coming of our lord Jesus Gaudí, aka Gaud.
I suppose, if you're a stone person, you think other people come from stones, too, so you might one day just walk up to a stone and tug on it, and not be all that surprised when a person emerges. That's the miracle of La Sagrada Familia.
Jesus, we can see you.
The top is not a sun, it's a rotating cross, and the three balls aren't balls, they're representative of the holy trinity, and the 18 little figures aren't little figures, oh, wait. Yes they are. But the other stuff isn't what you think it is. That's also the miracle of Gaud. Everything means something else.
All kidding aside, this place is unreal. After all of the cathedrals we've made a point to visit on this trip, going back to the Gothic and Baroque stuff is going to be difficult. Gaudí really did his own thing, and I'm surprised that I don't see more explicitly derivative works out in the world at large. Except on playgrounds.
All kidding back front and center. It's the flying mummy! A very important story in the Bible, the flying mummy parachutes from holy planes to deliver the word of mummification to all the little mummies of the world.
Sometimes, in life, you feel lost in the woods. Unable to find your way. But it's just a metaphor. Until you come to La Sagrada Familia. Now you're lost in a granite forest, for real, and your metaphorical crisis has just benefited from a miraculous shift in perspective. You're not lost in your life; you're lost in a building!
With a camera! So you take pictures as breadcrumbs, and once you're out of the "woods", you can look back and say something like "I'm glad I went through that, but I don't want to go through that again." And this is the story of why people draw maps of their churches in the back of their Bibles.
Maybe I should go this way? It seems to go straight. Moving slowly, I shouldn't set off the motion detectors...
Some of them are windows. Some of them are doors. One of those sentences is false. Some doors glow. Go.
That's a decorative staircase, that is.
We totally want our own hobbit house. 900 ish sqft., and it looks so quaint!
Gaudí designed this confessional.
This is a scale model of the upstairs in the crypt. The tour goes through the crypt. Where Gaudí is buried.
Here's a link to an explanation of this inverted hanging model, although, now that I think of it, the name sort of says it all...
Click on this one to see all the little details. Gaudí was actually alive to see some of this one done, and, once again, as we learned from our audioguide, everything means something.
Look! A way out!
Love the photos. We too were quite struck by the one of St. Peter - the 4th one, above. If you make it to El Quatre Gats (the tavern where Picasso staged his first exhibition, in the Barri Gotic), stand at the door with your back to the tavern and look up and a bit left, and you'll see the balcony of the place where we stayed, on the 3rd floor. Looking forward to hearing more of your stories!
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