Basilica and Expiatory Church of the Holy Family

關於

Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família, or simply Sagrada Família, is a Catholic church under construction in the Eixample district of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. Designed by the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, it is the tallest church

in the world. On 7 November 2010, Pope Benedict XVI consecrated the church and proclaimed it a basilica. Parts of the Sagrada Família (Nativity façade and Crypt) were declared as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005, under "Works of Antoni Gaudí".

On 19 March 1882, construction of Sagrada Família began under the architect Francisco de Paula del Villar. In 1883, when Villar resigned, 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.

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 Iberian Anarchist Federation (Federación Anarquista Ibérica, or FAI) set fire to the crypt and broke their way into the workshop, partially destroying Gaudí's original plans. 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. Construction resumed with 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, but this schedule was threatened by work slowdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The central Tower of Jesus Christ reached structural completion on 20 February 2026, when the final piece was installed, and it was inaugurated and blessed by Pope Leo XIV on 10 June 2026 during his visit to Spain, coinciding with the centenary of Gaudí's death. The tower, with a height of 172.5 m (566 ft), makes the Sagrada Família the world's tallest church.

內容改寫自 Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)。照片來自 Wikimedia Commons.