By: Hannah Buzza
For my website story, I will be recapping our trip to La Sagrada Familia and sharing my favorite facts and memories from the visit! To begin with, La Sagrada Familia is one of the most famous churches in the world and I looked forward to going to see it from the second we landed in Spain. Most of all, I was excited to hear that the big Samsung ad was taken off of it and therefore we could just see it in all of its construction glory!
First, our tour guide, Julie, was my favorite one we had our entire trip. She was really knowledgeable about La Sagrada Familia but just in general she was so sweet! She did an amazing job explaining everything and had answers to everyone’s questions. At the end of our tour, I spoke to her one on one to find out a little bit more about her and why/how she became a tour guide.
We all traveled separately to La Sagrada Familia and to get there the girls and I took the metro! It was fairly easy as the stop was literally named “La Sagrada Familia.” The second you step out of the metro you’re greeted by the giant church. There were many tourists but no matter where you were standing there was a lot to look at. The detailing on the outside of the church is insane and there was so much to see it was almost overwhelming. I couldn’t help but stare up at it in awe as we walked past it.
We met as a group at the back of the church in this cute park area. It was a nice contrast to the front, or actually the back as we had learned during the tour, with all of the tourists and big crowds. Once we all met up, we walked to the front of the church and had to wait in line. We were standing there for about ten minutes before we could get in, but we learned that on Sundays people wait outside the church for hours in the morning so ten minutes really isn’t bad at all.
Once we got through security, we began the tour outside of the church and spent some time learning facts about some of the architecture and just overall information about the building itself. There was so much to look at and the detailing on the outside of the church was insane. Also on the outside of the church was this model of the construction plans that were written up when the church was originally designed. It showed the plans vs. Gaudi’s additions and how they were compared.
I thought that was super interesting especially as the tour went on and we learned every person who took on the building of this church has somehow added their own little element to it! It’s like each builder has left their mark on this historical building. My favorite one left behind was the dice that no matter which was you added the numbers, they all added up to thirty-three which was how old Jesus was when he died.
Moving onto the inside of the building, it was much more minimalistic than I thought it would be. The tour guide said that was done purposefully so that all of the attention could go towards what is important and the service that is held. It makes perfect sense but just based on how the outside of the building looked, I was shocked that the inside was much more simplistic than I had imagined it would look.
The one thing that really caught my eyes on the inside was the stained glass windows that were all rainbow colors. Depending on the time of day, the sun hits the rainbow at different angles, and therefore different rainbow shadows are cast into the church. No matter where you were standing the beautiful rainbow colors cast a shadow on the church and it was so pretty to see.
We had a little bit of free time after the tour and Joey, Jonah, and I went to go try and see where Gaudi was buried. We were told by the tour guide that he was buried in a tomb underneath the raised platform the priest would stand on while giving service. We weren’t able to go all of the ways underneath it as there was a private ceremony going on, but you could see a tiny bit of the tomb from a window. It was neat that he was laid to rest there and I think he would’ve loved that since he was so passionate about this project.
Overall, the church is beautiful and if I didn’t already know before; I totally understand why people make the trip to Barcelona just to see the church. The architecture is stunning and there’s an amazing energy that flows through the church itself. I feel very lucky to have gotten to see it in person and hope I can one day see it again once it’s finished being built.