Churches & Chocolate

Here are a few sights from our time spent exploring the churches and chocolate shops in the old town.

Las Ramblas, the pedestrian street that travels from the sea to the center of town.

At the center of the old town is the Gothic cathedral of Barcelona. Officially titled Cathedral of the Holy Cross and Saint Eulalia, it dates from the 13th - 15th Century.  The cathedral also boasts a beautiful cloister that is home to 13 white geese.  Legend states that Eulalia was a herder of geese when she was martyred at the age of 13.

           

                               

Our guide Teresa told us that going to enjoy churos and chocolate around 5pm is a Catalan tradition. And you know us Art Girls always follow local customs, so when in Barcelona...enjoy the chocolate.  We subsequently learned that it was the Spanish conquerors who brought cocoa from South American to Europe and it was the Spanish who first invented a chocolate making machine in 1780.  

You can't imagine how delicious this was.

Next stop Santa Maria del Mar, built between 1329 and 1383 and is built in a classic Catalan Gothic style. All of the local guilds collaborated on its building, and as a result it became a symbol of political power during this period.  It's lack of ornate decoration is quite the contrast to the cathedral.

For a more contemporary chocolate fix, we discovered Chök The Chocolate Kitchen where you could enjoy a brick of gin & tonic white chocolate, macarons or donuts.  All delicious!

  

La Sagrada Família

The Basílica de la Sagrada Família was Antoni Gaudí's obsession.  He was given the commission by a conservative society that wished to build a temple as atonement for the city's sins of modernity.  The pious architect viewed its completion as his holy mission and after completing Parc Guell in 1911 he vowed to abandon secular architecture and devote himself entirely to La Sagrada Família.  Gaudí worked tirelessly on the church for 40 years, but at the time of his death only the crypt, apse walls, one portal and one tower had been completed.  Due to various circumstances (design changes, anarchists setting fire to the interior, etc.), after 100 years the cathedral is still under construction.  Projected completion dates range from the 2020s to the 2040s.

This whimsical, quirky, modern Gothic church, designed to seat 13,000 people, is the most visited monument in Spain.

The photo above shows southwest side of the church known as the Passion Facade, built after Gaudí's death between 1954 and 1978 using some of his surviving drawings.  Four of the church's eight completed towers (18 total towers are planned) are visible from this vantage point.  Two of the towers are accessible to visitors, but both were closed during our visit due to inclement weather.

Here we are in front of the Nativity Facade on the northeast side of the church.  Gaudí used plaster casts of local people (and even of the occasional corpse from the local morgue) as models for figures of the Nativity scene.  A downpour hit while we were inside the church, hence the matching red umbrellas purchased in the gift shop.

The base of the column closest to the sea on the Nativity Facade is a sea turtle, further evidence of Gaudí's love and study of nature.

Inside the nave the sheer verticality is astounding!

View facing the apse; note the shower of golden light at the top.

The altar.

Most of the stained glass is contemporary.

You may recall that Gaudí and the Modernisme movement celebrated forms found in nature.  The columns and buttresses of La Sagrada Família resemble tree trunks and branches, very different from traditional Gothic arches typically found along church aisles.

Presently, visitors enter the church through the doors at the Passion Facade.  Eventually, the bronze doors on the Glory Facade will be the main point of entry.  The decoration on these doors consists entirely of text dominated by the Lord's Prayer written in Catalan.

Bronze doors with The Lord's Prayer written in Catalan.

Visit the Sagrada Familia website (click here) for more information on this amazing church and construction progress.