There was a time when efforts to please gods involved human sacrifice and the building of large temples. Fortunately as humanity notionally grew more civilised this evolved to just building temples which were duly adorned with the creations of the finest artists and filled with the music of the best composers. There doesn’t seem to have ever been a shortage of cash available to fund such projects. Plenty of the faithful dutifully emptying their pockets on a Sunday and rich men buying their place in heaven.
Whatever you might think of the whole subject, religion has undeniably been the stimulus for some of our most enduring cultural output and most iconic of buildings. Religion has helped to shape the world in which we live.
For some considerable time now this has no longer been the case, at least from a cultural perspective. The best composers and artists freed from societal shackles are no longer limited to works of praise and have moved on. From the perspective of an outsider this means that the merits of contemporary religious cultural output are apparent only to those engulfed in those religions.
The one exception was the Sagrada Familia which I came across in Barcelona this week. This is a truly astonishing building designed by Spanish architectural genius Antoni Gaudi. It is almost disingenuous to call the Sagrada Familia contemporary because whilst the building is still under construction the design was started in 1883. In that respect it probably catches the tail end of the long era of great religious arts.
Notwithstanding that because it is still being built I feel justified in labelling it modern. Coming from Lincoln my benchmark is Lincoln Cathedral. Sagrada Familia is one of the few buildings that comes close to the magnificence of Lincoln Cathedral. Tops it even!
My daughter Hannah and I visited Barcelona last week and Sagrada Familia was on Trip Advisor as the number one tourist attraction in town. Being tourists we did the right thing. Initially we did the wrong thing. We just turned up. That doesn’t work. The queues to get in were two or three deep and stretched maybe a couple of hundred metres. There was no queue for the “internet advance purchase” entrance.
I considered switching on roaming and buying the tickets there and then. I figured that those queuing must be digitally ignorant or digitally impoverished. However the act of switching on roaming would have meant financial impoverishment so we cut our losses and elected to use the free WiFi of Hotel Jazz and come back in the morning.
The one thing that stuck in my mind was the strong high steel fencing all around the church to stop freeloaders sneaking in. We have to remember that this is a church. The idea that it has to have fencing around it to keep people out seemed very strange. I accept that they are still having to pay for the builders so I won’t dwell on the point.
The next morning we walked past hundreds of people to the front of the queue, flashed the booking reference on my phone and were in. Sorted.
Once inside you really do see why Sagrada Familia is the top attraction and has been labelled a World Heritage site by UNESCO. The building truly is awesome which I’m sure is part of the plan. It has also been designed to be fit for purpose with Biblical stories woven into its fabric and the layout pitched at the functional requirements of the church.
Aside from the grandeur what really stood out was the number of tourists ogling the place. You couldn’t move without getting in the way of someone’s photo opportunity. It was almost like a religious Disneyland. Guided tours thronged.
The nave was roped off so that people could go and sit and contemplate. This deference to spirituality was policed by a somewhat effeminate looking man in a red jacket who shoed people away for ducking under the tape to reach a seat and insisting they went around to the correct entrance at the back. He also quite rightly made me take my hat off.
It was easy to imagine the place on a Sunday, full of flock lead by gold bedecked incense swinging clerics. They were nowhere to be seen on our visit although we saw a couple of nuns doing the tourist thing.
The Sagrada Familia though, has hidden depths and behind the altar was a small window that let you look down into what was presumably the crypt. Here we caught a glimpse of where the hard core praying was done. Rows of wooden benches populated with people sat in front of a priest. We couldn’t hear what was going on but it was clearly a church service.
It was almost as if the church within a church was where the real action took place with the outer shell being the cash generative façade. Presumably those in the inner sanctum had not had to pay the 14.80E entrance fee to the basilica (19.30E with tour of the towers). Maybe they had an annual pass or their own separate, heavily guarded entrance.
Moseying on, looking perhaps for a coffee shop, we found a vending machine. They missed a trick there. Perhaps they didn’t have the space. Eventually we came across the souvenir shop. I bought a book and a fridge magnet and we went on our way.
Sagrada Familia is worth a visit but buy your tickets in advance and beat the queues.
Tags: Gods