Antoni Gaudí (25 June 1852 – 10 June 1926) was a Spanish architect, born in Reus. Gaudí's work has a very individual and distinctive style and his most famous / well known work is the Sagrada Familia, a large (also the largest!!) Roman Catholic church in Barcelona - and now a UNESCO world heritage site. Work commenced in 1882 and it is still not finished! As you can see from the tower cranes, work is continuing on the building and it is expected to be finally finished in 2028! You can read more about it HERE. The sheer scale of it and the external decoration are quite breath-taking! It all seems very big for the space it's in. One cannot seem to get far enough away from it to take anything but upward-looking shots, as the closest buildings are not that far away - unless you resort to wide-angle or fisheye lenses!
I struggled to take photos because, as you see, there is a lot of scaffolding and many cranes in the way!
The front entrance.
The towers above the front entrance.
A lot of work going on, but you can still see the beauty of the church. The lighter shade of stone shows those parts which have been installed quite recently.
The workmanship is really outstanding.
A photo of a post card; obviously a night shot!
A post card of the interior. We did not get to go inside, as the queues were horrific - wall-to-wall, and about 500 metres long- and in the hot sun it seemed just too much of a strain ! The entrance fees were eye-watering as well! You can get tickets on-line, which saves queuing, but we hadn't thought that far ahead!
A post card aerial shot; you can see the cranes in place front and back.
Yet another postcard, this time of the interior.
We also visited the Museu Picasso, but sadly no cameras could be used inside. I have never been a Picasso fan, but after seeing his early paintings, I may just have changed my mind!
Post cards to the rescue again; this was simply called "Man in a hat" and not at all what you might expect of a Picasso!
The choirboy.
and for the cat lovers out there...
I thought that I would finish Barcelona in 3 parts but it is not to be! I still have the market, Columbus Monument, and a few odd photos of interest, so I hope that part 4 will be out there very soon. I promise I will get back to blogging on Charente subjects ASAP, so please hang in there!
For those who are following My Life Before Charente, I will get back to that I hope also very soon. Just too much to do, and now all the fruit is ready on the trees, there is much bottling to do in the kitchen as well!
