Barcelona - Sagrada Familia inside

Present church with only 8 of the 22 towers built.

On Monday, Chris and I went back to the Sagrada Familia church to see the inside.  Chris bought tickets online, so we sailed past the huge line of people waiting to buy tickets at the window and just walked in.  Not having a printer here in Spain, he  downloaded the bar code onto his iPhone so that they could just scan the screen ... ah, someone who knows how to use technology!  I'd still be standing in line...  The picture above is the church in it's present stage of incompletion.

Workmen climbing on the gable

When it is finished it will have fourteen more towers, the tallest of which haven't been built.  The photo on the right shows workmen climbing the "small" gables to the right of the tall towers in the photo above, which gives scale to this enormous building.  Notice the gables have ceramic glazed fruit atop, giving an oh-so-Spanish "Carmen Miranda" effect.  The caps of the spires are gigantic ceramic polychrome glazed flowers

Central nave of the church

Columns have branches like trees supporting the ceiling

Light from a side wall

But the church isn't even near completion.  It won't be completed until 2041 when the central tower over the transept and the front elevation (which hasn't even been started) are done.  When the front facade is completed, the portico will span over the street in front of the building, the entire block of buildings across the street will be razed, and the staircase will go down into a green space/park where they now stand. 

Chris and I stood back and looked at the behemoth building and tried to imagine how much bigger/taller it's going to be once the rest of the twenty-two towers are completed.  Eighteen are bell towers.  It's just mind boggling. In the park across the street, I bought a great abstract painting of the church from a Bolivian artist.  I couldn't believe how inexpensive it was and it's original; she said that she doesn't do copies!  We had a nice conversation about Barcelona and Bolivia as I extolled her talent.  It wasn't gratuitous; she was quite talented.  I'm looking forward to getting home and framing it.