In the 1950's, work resumed again, and will continue well into the future. Unfortunately, all of Gaudi's plans were lost in yet another church burning, so the architects that have been working on it over the last sixty years are more or less making things up. They are supposed to be following his style and guessing at what he wanted, but it doesn't seem that way. They've finished one of the facades, but it seems fairly brutal and crude, quite unlike his other work. The interior is hard to judge, as it's a huge building site. But there are certainly enough strange shapes and features spread throughout to ensure that, if the church is ever finished, it will remain at the top of everybody's sightseeing agenda.

Gaudi's, and Barcelona's, most famous building is of course the Sagrada Familia. When the Exeimple real estate opened up, it was a perfect opportunity to erect a massive church, similar in size to St. Peter's in Rome. But there the similarity ends; with Gaudi at the helm it was also to be a culmination of his individual, modernista style. He started work on the church in 1883, and grew increasingly obsessed with the project. In 1911 he stopped taking any new commissions, and moved into the church to focus exclusively on this project. He lived on bread, water and prayer alone. He was run over by a trolley in 1926, and the far from finished project was frozen.



The church was planned to have three facades, one for the Birth, one for the Passion, and one for glory. Each was to have four soaring spires, and collectively the twelve would represent the apostles. Four taller spires would then be added to represent the four Evangelists, with a massive central spire topping the whole thing to represent Jesus.