[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/GettyImages-948921290.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tLater this month, Pope Leo XIV will visit Barcelona\u2019s famed Sagrada Familia to inaugurate and bless the Tower of Jesus Christ, the final tower of the long-gestating church. The tower was completed in February, wrapping up 144 years of construction on the notoriously complex and intricate design.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe famed church was designed by architect Antoni Gaudi, a pioneer of Art Nouveau and modernisme<\/em>, or Catalan Modernism. Construction on La Bas\u00edlica de la Sagrada Familia, considered his masterpiece, started in 1882. When Gaudi died in 1926, at the age of 73, only one tower was completed. Work has continued on the monument in century since, with it becoming one of the most visited tourist attractions in Europe. A record 4.87 million people visited the church in 2025, with ticket sales generating over $150 million in revenue.<\/p>\n \n\tThe inauguration ceremony is scheduled for June 10, exactly one hundred years from Gaudi\u2019s death. The Pope will bless the church in mass, set to be attended by Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez. <\/p>\n \n\tIn an interview with the Art Newspaper<\/em>, Mateu Hern\u00e1ndez, the chief executive officer of Visit Barcelona, described the wonder of seeing the finished curch after a lifetime in the city. \u201c\u201cIt was always there, germinating, slowly growing, being part of our lives since the beginning, but then it\u2019s like seeing it for the first time,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re going down the Diagonal and whoa! There it is. You go up on your building\u2019s rooftop and whoa! There it is again.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe ceremony will also coincide with Barcelona\u2019s designation by UNESCO as a World Capital of Architecture; the city will host the UIA World Congress of Architects from June 28 to July 2.<\/p>\n \n\tBorn in 1852 in the Catalonian city of Reus, Gaudi credited his father\u2019s business as a boiler-maker for helping him learn how to see a space before he started working. Gaudi graduated from Barcelona\u2019s School of Architecture in 1878 and saw a meteoric rise, as he designed a display case shown at the World\u2019s Fair in Paris, then public lampposts for the city of Barcelona, folowed by several landmark residental commissions.<\/p>\n \n\tWhile the Sagrada Familia is his most famous work, Gaudi is well known for Park G\u00fcell,\u00a0completed between 1900 and 1913, which features many of his iconic motifs, Casa Batll\u00f3, and the apartment building Casa Mil\u00e0, which is mimics a wave. In 1910 his work was celebrated with an exhibition at the Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He died in 1926 after being hit by a tram, and has since been buried in the crypt of his masterpiece, the Sagrada Familia. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/pope-leo-xiv-inaugurate-antoni-gaudi-sagrada-familia-1234788362\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/GettyImages-948921290.jpg?w=1024″] Later this month, Pope Leo XIV will visit Barcelona\u2019s famed Sagrada Familia to inaugurate and bless the Tower of Jesus Christ, the final tower of the long-gestating church. The tower was completed in February, wrapping up 144 years of construction on the notoriously complex and intricate design. The famed church was designed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1972974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1972974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1972974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1972974\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1972974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1972974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1972974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}