Sagrada Família

The Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família,^[a] otherwise known as Sagrada Família, is a church under construction in the Eixample district of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. It is the largest unfinished Catholic church in the world. Designed by the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí (1852–1926), in 2005 his work on Sagrada Família was added to an existing (1984) UNESCO World Heritage Site, "Works of Antoni Gaudí".^[5] On 7 November 2010, Pope Benedict XVI consecrated the church and proclaimed it a minor basilica.^[6][7][8]

On 19 March 1882, construction of Sagrada Família began under architect Francisco de Paula del Villar. In 1883, when Villar resigned,^[5] Gaudí took over as chief architect, transforming the project with his architectural and engineering style, combining Gothic and curvilinear Art Nouveau forms. Gaudí devoted the remainder of his life to the project, and he is buried in the church's crypt. At the time of his death in 1926, less than a quarter of the project was complete.^[9]

Relying solely on private donations, Sagrada Família's construction progressed slowly and was interrupted by the Spanish Civil War. In July 1936, anarchists from the FAI set fire to the crypt and broke their way into the workshop, partially destroying Gaudí's original plans.^[10] In 1939, Francesc de Paula Quintana took over site management, which was able to go on with the material that was saved from Gaudí's workshop and that was reconstructed from published plans and photographs.^[11] Construction resumed to intermittent progress in the 1950s. Advancements in technologies such as computer-aided design and computerised numerical control (CNC) have since enabled faster progress, and construction passed the midpoint in 2010. In 2014, it was anticipated that the building would be completed by 2026, the centenary of Gaudí's death,^[12] but this schedule was threatened by work slowdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.^[13] In March 2024, an updated forecast reconfirmed a likely completion of the building in 2026, though the announcement stated that work on sculptures, decorative details and a controversial stairway leading to the main entrance is expected to continue until 2034.^[14]

Describing Sagrada Família, art critic Rainer Zerbst said "it is probably impossible to find a church building anything like it in the entire history of art",^[15] and Paul Goldberger describes it as "the most extraordinary personal interpretation of Gothic architecture since the Middle Ages".^[16]

Though sometimes described as a cathedral, the basilica is not the cathedral church of the Archdiocese of Barcelona; that title belongs to the Cathedral of the Holy Cross and Saint Eulalia (Barcelona Cathedral).^[17]

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