Design
Spires! Cupolas! Here's What the Sagrada Familia Will Look Like When It's Finished
An architectural masterpiece 150 years in the making.
La Sagrada Familia, the ongoing masterpiece of famous architect Antoni GaudÃ, has been under construction for nearly 150 years.
Construction on this elaborate Roman Catholic church dates back to 1866. Gaudà took over in 1883 and began dedicating himself exclusively to building the Sagrada Familia in 1914. When Gaudà died in 1926, only one bell tower had been erected and the structure was only 25 percent done. When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, a fire destroyed original plans, drawings, photographs and scaled models, but according to Fast.Co Design, Gaudà did leave behind some crucial geometric-based rules for constructing the rest of the church. Construction resumed in 1939 and the structure has been rising slowly ever since.