Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Holiday snaps help put roof on Sagrada Familia

It will have taken 126 years, but Barcelona’s emblematic, eccentric cathedral-to-be, the Sagrada Familia, will be open for mass in three years’ time.

Holiday snaps help put roof on Sagrada Familia

Giles Tremlett
Saturday June 4, 2005
The Guardian

It will have taken 126 years, but Barcelona’s emblematic, eccentric cathedral-to-be, the Sagrada Familia, will be open for mass in three years’ time.

The colourful, wedding-cake cathedral designed by the Catalan architect Antonio Gaudí at the end of the 19th century will have enough of a roof on it by then for religious services to be held inside the building, those in charge of its construction say.

The cathedral, which has survived anarchist attacks as well as decades of local indifference early last century, has been saved by camera-toting Japanese tourists.

Article continues
The rules under which the cathedral has been built mean that only donations, or the receipts from tourist visitors, can be used for funding it.

A visit to take snaps of the Sagrada Familia’s soaring spires is the highlight of any Japanese tourist’s trip to Spain and the money they leave behind has helped accelerate work over the past 20 years. As a result, a building that once looked as though it would take more than two centuries to complete will be open for Christian business in a mere century and a quarter.

It also seems the conversion to Christianity of a Japanese man may also mean Gaudi could be heading for sainthood.

It would be nice to see this place completed and used after all these years.