Peter Stanford – author of the fascinating, insightful and scholarly new biography Gaudí: God’s Architect – observes that there is a vacancy for a patron saint of architects, “with the 3rd-century martyr St Barbara currently holding the fort on the slightly dubious grounds that she was imprisoned in a tower by her father but managed to make a window in the wall so as to escape”.
Today, June 10, on the centenary of Antoni Gaudí’s death, Pope Leo XIV celebrated Solemn Mass and consecrated the newly completed Tower of Jesus Christ, the last and highest of the basilica’s 18 honeycomb towers. At 172.5 metres, it makes La Sagrada Família the tallest church on earth.
