Spain and France Odyssey: Gaudi Day - Sagrada Familia and La Pedrera

We begin today with an observation. Barcelona never sleeps. In truth, Barcelona sleeps between 1pm and 5pm. There was more activity on the street below our apartment in the Barri Gotic at 3am than at 3pm. These jet-lagged travelers didn't mind though as we slept several hours to prepare for our first full day in Barcelona. Today's theme, the artwork and architecture of Antoni Gaudi.

(The photo's are below but we think you should suffer from some culture as Zach has had to do. Poor kid, this is just the first of many days of summer education for him.)

We began our day with late breakfast at the St. Joseph La Boqueria market. Fresh fruit, fresh fish, and cured meats were all around - and delicious. We left the market and walked towards la Sagrada Familia along La Ramblas, a main thoroughfare lined with street vendors, retail stores ranging from Timberland to Cartier.

A bit about Antoni Gaudi courtesy our friends at wiki:

Gaudi was a Spanish Catalan architect from Reus and the best known practitioner of Catalan Modernism. Gaudí's works reflect an individualized and distinctive style. Most are located in Barcelona, including his magnum opus, the Sagrada Família.

Gaudí's work was influenced by his passions in life: architecture, nature, and religion.[3] Gaudí considered every detail of his creations and integrated into his architecture such crafts as ceramics, stained glass, wrought ironwork forging and carpentry. He also introduced new techniques in the treatment of materials, such as trencadís which used waste ceramic pieces.

Under the influence of neo-Gothic art and Oriental techniques, Gaudí became part of the Modernista movement which was reaching its peak in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His work transcended mainstream Modernisme, culminating in an organic style inspired by natural forms. Gaudí rarely drew detailed plans of his works, instead preferring to create them as three-dimensional scale models and molding the details as he conceived them.

La Sagarada Famila is astounding. Poor adjective. Awesome? Amazing? Incredible? Mind blowing? Yes, yes, yes and yes. Superlatives do not do it justice, nor do the pictures below the culture part of this post.

The beginnings of the Expiatory Temple of the Holy Family, known as the Sagrada Familia, go back to 1866 when Josep Maria Bocabella i Verdaguer founded the Spiritual Association of Devotees of Saint Joseph, which in 1874 began campaigning for the construction of an expiatory temple dedicated to the Holy Family. In 1881, enabled by various donations, the Association purchased a 12,800m² plot of land, located between the streets of Marina, Provença, Sardenya, and Mallorca, to build the temple on.

The first stone was laid on St Joseph’s day, 19 March, 1882, in a ceremony presided over by the Bishop of Barcelona, Josep Urquinaona. It signalled the start of construction, first in the crypt located under the apse, following the Neo-gothic design drawn up by the architect Francisco de Paula del Villar y Lozano, the Sagrada Familia’s first architect. After a short while, due to disagreements with the promotors, he resigned from the post of chief architect and the job fell to Antoni Gaudí.

Five generations have witnessed the building of Sagarada Familia and the construction continues. Gaudí’s conception of the Sagrada Familia was based on the traditions of Gothic and Byzantine cathedrals. His intention was to express Christian belief through the architecture and the beauty of the building and communicate the message of the Evangelists. He achieved a symbiosis between form and Christian iconography, with a personal architecture generated via new but thoroughly logical structures, forms and geometries inspired by nature, with light and colour also playing a central role.

The meaning of the Sagrada Familia is communicated through the form and expressivity of its architecture and the iconography of its sculpture.

The various architectural elements are imbued with hierarchically organised Christian symbolism. Thus, each of its 18 towers has a special significance. In the middle is the tower dedicated to Jesus Christ and around it are four towers representing the Gospels; the books containing the life and teachings of Jesus. The tower above the apse, crowned by a star, represents his mother the Virgin Mary, while the remaining 12 towers represent the 12 Apostles, witnesses to his words and deeds.

According to our tour guide, la Sagrada Familia will be completed in the year 2026. Any friends want to join us for that trip? We're in!

"From wherever they are seen, once finished, these 18 towers will be an extraordinary sight and provide a sense of elevation to the central tower dedicated to Jesus Christ." - A. Gaudi

After leaving the basilica we walked to another Barcelona piece of Gaudi architecture, Casa Mila' or La Pedrera.

Known as La Pedrera (the stone quarry) because of its rough outer appearance, reminiscent of an open quarry, Casa Milà was commissioned by the industrialist Pere Milà i Camps and his wife, Rosario Segimon i Artells, the widow of a man from Reus who had made a fortune in the colonies, from Antoni Gaudí in 1906. The idea was to erect a building on a plot on the boundary of Barcelona and Gràcia, as a family home, but also with apartments for rent, at a time when the Barcelona Eixample had become the driving force behind the expansion of the city, which turned Passeig de Gràcia into the new bourgeois residential area.

Casa Milà was built as two apartment blocks with independent entrances linked by two large inner courtyards and a sinuous common façade that conveys the rhythm of the interior. The structure of the house is made of pillars and contains an open plan floor with large openings on the façade. The building marked a break with the architectural language of Gaudí’s work in terms of innovation in both the functional aspects and the constructive and ornamental ones.

Gaudí planned Casa Milà (1906–1912) at the age of fifty-three, when he was at the height of his powers and had found a style of his own independent of any established ones. It turned out to be his last civil work and one of the most innovatory in its functional, constructive and ornamental aspects. Indeed, thanks to his artistic and technical ideas, it has always been considered a breakthrough work, outside the concepts of the time, a rara avis in Modernisme itself and, especially, a work that anticipated the architecture of the 20th century.

Barcelona continues to amaze us at every turn. People watching is a highlight as are pitchers of sangria and the perfect weather.

Tomorrow - Picasso!

Now - photo's of the day.

.»