“The creation continues incessantly through the media of man”.
Antoni Gaudi
(Stick to the natural order of things, & read El Camino San Antoni Gaudi – Part I first.)
PARC GUELL
Most visitors to Parc Guell will arrive at the bottom, battle the crowds in an attempt to snap a photo of the lizard without too many Japanese tourists in the background, & then climb the stairs to the floating plaza for their portrait on “the bench”. Which is absolutely gorgeous – the wonderfully curvy, sinuous shape covered in beautiful mosaic tiling epitomises Gaudi’s organic approach to what, historically, would have been a cobbled square edged in marble benches with either an obelisk or a statue of an important religious guy in the middle. Or a military figure on a horse. Or a grotesque fountain.
But give yourself enough time, and you can spend hours (as we did) exploring the extents of this enormous park & discovering all it’s hidden corners.
What is probably most interesting about Parc Guell, and possibly one of the less widely known facts about it, is that Gaudi designed it as a housing development which unfortunately was a commercial failure. The Gaudi museum, housed in a building that Gaudi lived in during the last years of his life, was designed and built as the “showhome” for the estate. With a little bit of imagination, you can daydream about what it would have been like had the project got off the ground….forget Caroline Springs, and imagine a fantastical neighbourhood of Gaudi-esque houses sprinkled through a Dr Seuss landscape.
I just wonder if Gaudi spent a bit of time reading Dr Seuss…
The combination of an organic material used in such a rough, unpolished way but applied to a beautiful, mathematically perfect catenary arch, is so wonderfully, well, Gaudiesque. Light & shadow, stone & earth, passage & vista…
As usual, they were carrying out quite extensive “works” (temporary fencing, bulldozers, piles of dirt & workmen in hardhats) to quite a large part of the floating Plaza. But that’s Europe really, we’d be disappointed if we didn’t see some scaffolding covering up a monument somewhere!
More Gaudi vaults beneath the aqueduct walkways.
No boring marble benches on this Plaza…
The compulsory bench portrait! And yes, Fitness Monk fans, I am dressed like that because we did do a workout in Parc Guell. We even had a soundtrack to our pushups provided by a busker & his guitar, which rounded off the experience very nicely.
Forget straight lines & polished marble.
Relishing in an opportunity to catch some much needed Vitamin D in the early days of Spain’s winter. Sunshine + Parc Guell + Picnic Lunch made for a lovely Saturday.
The Floating Plaza, with no sign of an obelisk or gaudy fountain anywhere.
Standing on the steps (next to the infamous lizard) looking up at the floating Plaza, you can appreciate exactly how much Gaudi eschewed straight lines in favour of sinewy movement.
The underside of the plaza is a network of concave domes that direct water, seeping through from the gravel plaza above, to the hollow columns that support the entire plaza. The water is stored in tanks below the columns & reused in the park.
Gaudi took great pleasure from studying nature & drawings inspiration from it that he implemented in all his architectural works, whether he was creating the ceiling of a living room in an apartment that looked like a sea urchin, or simply decorating the vaulted ceiling of his floating plaza. Nature always features.
The more time you can spend in Parc Guell the better, as details continue to reveal themselves wherever you walk.
The most common arrival point is the grand staircase climbing up towards the floating plaza, & on your way you MUST stop to meet the most famous lizard / dragon / reptilian creature in all the land…
Not a Japanese tourist in sight!! Well done Kendall Monk, photographer extraordinaire…
TEMPLE DE LA SAGRADA FAMILIA
The literal translation of the Spanish is “Church of the Holy Family”, & Gaudi’s original design of the cathedral calls for 18 towers in total (only 8 of which have been completed). They will represent the 12 apostles, the 4 evangelists, the Virgin Mary & finally Jesus Christ; the tallest tower (symbolising Christ) will soar 170 metres into the air.
There is enough going on in the design & history of this monumental building to warrant an entire post in itself, & nothing can really prepare you for seeing it in the flesh. I remember arriving in Athens 5 years ago, head buried amongst the hustle & bustle of street life and then glancing up – catching site of the Acropolis – & just coming to a dead stop because what you are looking at has so much history, is full of so much symbolism, & is flat out just such an incredible building that you can’t really believe you’re finally seeing it with your own eyes.
The same thing happens with the Sagrada Familia – emerging from the underground metro station, you are suddenly right beneath this incredible building, which is incomparable to any other structure on the planet in it’s uniqueness, complexity of design & absolute devotion to Christ & all that represents. For even the most unreligious, stepping inside this building makes you feel closer to something.
View from the park across the street, looking back towards the Nativity Facade. Completed almost entirely under Gaudi’s personal supervision, it depicts the birth & childhood of Christ.
The Passion Facade, direclty below four of the twelve towers that are dedicated to the apostles. Work began in 1882, and is predicted to finish somewhere between 2020 & 2040, which could amount to 150 years of building.
Mounds of fruits & grains sit atop the towers, glowing in glass mosaic.
Climbing the towers is worth the extra cost, because while you take an elevator up you are then led by a series of staircases & bridges up & down the four towers that sit above the Passion Facade, giving you a unique vantage point of the church & also bringing you close to interesting parts of the building.
The Passion Facade was started in 1986 & completed 20 years later. Following the story of Christ’s last days, death, & then ascension to heaven, it is strikingly different to the organic drippiness of the Nativity Facade. Blobs are replaced by angles, lifelike figures replaced with stylised statues. The sculpture is Josep Subirachs & people tend to either love or loathe this work. We love it.
Subirachs payed homage to Gaudi’s rooftop chimney pots at Casa Mila (see Part I) when designing these “helmets”.
An inscription highlighted on the doors of the church read “What Is The Truth?”
Photograph of a drawing illustrating the Passion Facade, tracing Christ’s final days in an “S” pattern that starts in the bottom right corner.
This view has always reminded me of a sand castle built by dripping wet sand into a mound…which is a pretty natural, organic thing to do…
The phrase “Give us this day our daily bread” is repeated over & over, in 50 different languages…
The Sagrada is definitely one of those monuments that will give you a stiff neck.
Monumentally mindblowingly beautiful. This has to be one of the most unique & magnificent interior spaces in the world of architecture today.
I am constantly amazed that this design came out of the turn of last century.
Modern stained glass is being designed & installed by a mastercraftsman. But the upper windows were designed, by Gaudi, to have clear glass, allowing natural light into the cathedral giving it a wonderful lightness that is so absent in many other churches, which are often so dark inside.
Even the staircases within the bell towers could be…..a nautilus…..a snail shell…..a tornado….a whirlpool….
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