#59. La Sagrada
"When the church is finished it will have 18 towers: 12 dedicated to the
apostles, 4 to the evangelists, one to Jesus and another to Mary."
Now only 8 towers have been built: 4 on each façade.
The major thing I was impressed by mostly when I got into the church was the architectural construction of the ceiling, real masterpiece.
According to the audio guide and I think I heard it right, inside the church now there are 3 façades:
- passion façade, depicts Christ's passion - suffering and death and faces west where the sun sets
- glory façade is a façade of crucial questions and answers: who we are, why we are here, etc. and prayer himself is inbetween of questions and answers
- nativity façade, very different to a passion façade, shows joy from the birth of Christ. Images of nature symbolizing life are everywhere. There are several porticos in this façade - charity, hope and faith (dedicated to Virgin Mary).
Everything has a reason here, Gaudí was putting sense into everything he had been doing, his artwork is full of symbolism, symbolic items can be seen everywhere. Each piece is a syllable of a massive prayer. La Sagrada is a luminous church, full of light because Gaudí was obsessed with regulating light.
The church has a Latin cross shape ground plan. Nature was one of the greatest inspirations for the author. Great acoustic is the main feature, four organs are planned, so far one has been installed. Towers are decorated with pinnacles made of reinforced concrete and covered with Venetian glass. Glass helps to spread sound.
The last, but not the least important thing to be mentioned is the towers. I've been in two of them and really, wow was the first thing that came into my mind. They are called nativity towers - up with the lift and 270 steps down. Good exercise, after which legs are shaking for a while.
