Showing posts with label Barcelona. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barcelona. Show all posts

Friday, August 24, 2012

The 150 Year Church

One of Gaudi's finest achievements is La Sagrada Familia, a church begun in 1882 (Gaudi joined the team in 1883). Construction is still ongoing, due to be completed in 1926. Amazingly, the halfway point of construction was just passed, in 2010! La Sagrada Familia is full of unique, incredible details and perfectly exhibits a meeting of Gaudi's two loves of nature and religion. While I can certainly appreciate a beautiful church with paintings and mosaics and marble work and carved wood altars, La Sagrada Familia is something completely and utterly different, yet still a place that fills the spirit with glory.
The Passion (or Crucifixion) Facade faces west. Stark and striking, the sculptures are harsh and angular and sparse, meant to invoke a feeling of bones.



The simplicity allows focus and reflection, and the expressions show the emotion. This facade is in deliberate contrast to...
The Nativity Facade, a riot of sculpture with tons of nature scenes. This facade reminds me of the dripping sand castles I used to make as a child. Gaudi actually intended for all the figures to be painted in different colors. There is another facade under construction, so we did not get to see it due to the coverings and cranes, but it will be the Glory Facade (Ascension).
The interior is probably my favorite church interior of any I've ever visited. It is filled with columns meant to suggest trees, and with artfully placed natural lighting, the feeling is of standing in a forest. In some places, the columns are placed in a line, while in others, they wander organically. The columns are fluted and at the top branch out, meeting the next column. On lower levels, colored stained glass lights up the stone in oranges and blues and greens, while the upper levels allow natural sunlight to filter through the "branches."
The chandelier over the altar area is just as unique as the rest of the church.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Fantastical Architecture

Barcelona is home to several buildings designed by one of the 19th and 20th centuries most amazing architects, Antoni Gaudi. His work is imaginative and fantastical, with curves and themes and mosaics. He was passionate about nature and religion, and these passions show in his designs. Below are some pictures of one his most famous houses, Casa Batllo, remodeled for a Barcelona family in the early 1900s, and photos of Park Guell, also built in the early 1900s as part of an upscale housing development on a hill overlooking the city. The housing development never really caught on, and today, the park is a lovely place to walk and enjoy views over the city of Barcelona.
Casa Batllo is nicknamed "House of Bones" or "House of Yawns." The exterior is striking, and the interior is filled with flowing, curving lines in walls, ceiling, and staircases.
Casa Batllo is made up of rooms surrounding an inner, completely open area which allows natural light from the ceiling to fill each floor. Blue tile work uses shades of blue to create a trick of the eye as the light grows dimmer lower down.
The roof line mimics a dragon's back and also features a cross to resemble a plant bulb as well as mosaic chimneys.
Park Guell, overlooking the city of Barcelona and the sea beyond.
Park Guell's Terrace features a curving, mosaic covered bench on three sides, a marvelous place to relax.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Barcelona Rewind

I have a few photo projects I'm hoping to complete pre-baby. One of them is labeling photos from our December trip to Munich and January trip to Barcelona. I pulled up the Barcelona pictures today, pulled out my trusty travel journal to jog my memory, and then flipped thru the journal over and over before realizing that I wrote nothing about Barcelona in it. Nothing at all. We went to Barcelona about two weeks after finding out we would have a child in a few months, and by the time that long weekend trip came about, I was in the throes of first trimester sleepiness. I slept for most of the trip. Nathan went out exploring on his own some. I managed to do a few walks with him in between napping. Then the morning sickness set in the day we left Barcelona, and I just neglected both the photos and the blogging. Rather than do a typical trip description, I'll just share several of the photos over the next two or three days.

Barcelona has amazing architecture
The Barcelona Cathedral has a beautiful cloister which also holds a pool with 13 geese. The geese are said to watch over the remains of a 3rd century, Christian girl, who, at age 13, was brought before the town's Consul. He was quite active in persecuting Christians, and the young girl, Eulalia, refused to recant her Christian faith. The Consul sentenced her to 13 tortures, including rolling her down a street in a barrel filled with broken glass and knives, and setting her on fire. She eventually died by either crucifixion or decapitation, depending on which story one reads. Her remains are in the crypt of the cathedral.
Barcelona has a huge, beautiful beach, and along the promenade, there were several sand castle artists who put real fire accents in their castles.
Our hotel was on the edge of one of the best markets we've ever seen, La Boqueria. Each stall was a riot of color, and one of the best things were these fruit juice stalls. One cup was only 1-2 euro and there were dozens of flavors of fruit juice mixtures. So yummy!