Antoni Gaudí, an illustrious Catalan architect, worked for forty-three years on the same project: the Sagrada Familia. Its levels of detail, complexity and ambition explain why more than 135 years after the first stone was laid, there is still about 30% of the work pending to be finished.
From the year 1874 the Spiritual Association of Devotees of Saint Joseph promoted the construction of an expiatory temple in Barcelona, officially beginning its construction on March 19, 1882 and being assumed by Gaudí from 1883.
Symbolically, it represents “the expression in stone of the Christian faith” and highlights the unity of the family nucleus as one of its key elements. The design masterfully illustrates fragments of the Gospels and takes them as an inspiration for the concept, distribution of the spaces, design of the different facades and interiors.
The Sagrada Familia is a place of worship and its funding has been, since its inception, based on donations and contributions, hence it is called an expiatory temple.
Together with other works of Antoni Gaudí this magnificent -and unfinished- architectural piece was included in 2005 by UNESCO in the list of World Heritage Sites and, in 2010, it was consecrated and declared as a “minor basilica” by Pope Benedict XVI.
From Cultoural.com we invite you to enjoy the evolution of this masterpiece and to know more about it visiting: http://www.sagradafamilia.org/