---
node: spot_barcelona_sagrada_familia
type: spot
slug: sagrada_familia
destination: dest_barcelona
title: "Sagrada Família"
lead: "Gaudí's basilica has been under construction since 1882, and its central tower — the last major work, timed for the centenary of his death in 2026 — will make it the tallest church in the world. He knew he would not see it finished and designed it so that others could continue."
published: 2026-08-12
updated: 2026-08-12
image_file: spot_barcelona_sagrada_familia.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sagrada_Familia_Basilica,_Barcelona_09.jpg"
image_author: "Ank Kumar"
image_license: "CC BY-SA 4.0"
---

## Overview

Gaudí took over a year into the project and worked on it for 43 years, the last 12 exclusively, living on the site. The design is structural rather than decorative: the leaning columns branch like trees because that is how the loads are carried, which let him drop the flying buttresses he called crutches. Anarchists burned his workshop and models in 1936, and the work since has been a reconstruction of his intentions from plaster fragments and photographs — which is the strongest argument against the building and its builders make it openly.

## Highlights

Book a timed ticket weeks ahead and add a tower — the Nativity tower for the older carving, the Passion tower for the view down the nave roof. Go in the late afternoon when the west windows are lit and the interior turns red and orange. The Nativity facade is Gaudí's own work; the Passion facade is Subirachs from the 1980s and deliberately unlike it.