Sagrada Familia, Barcelona, Spain by Antoni Gaudí

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The number one attraction of Barcelona is undoubtedly Sagrada Familia. This unfinished church is a whimsical, steel-beamed mountain growing out of the landscape, a creature of the imaginative mind of Antoni Gaudí who died while it was still under construction, run down by a tram in a tragic accident. Barcelonans have been working on the church for a century, and in the past decade have made remarkable progress — in the movie we flash back ten years to show how the interior was filled then with metal scaffolding which is all gone now. The interior of Sagrada Familia seems finished, a modern version of the Gothic ideal. There are still various political arguments about how to get the work done and how to pay for it, but Sagrada Familia is fully open to the public. There are usually long lines waiting to get in, so make your reservations on their web site before going.

When there you can purchase the added option and ride an elevator most of the way up one of the towers and walk a bit further to the top. From here you gain quite a view of the construction site as well as vistas across the city — a panorama of the skyline of Barcelona and some details of the towers of Sagrada Familia itself. However, there is not much of a skyline vista to see in this part of town, except for the general layout and one outstanding building, an odd round tower looking like a big, glass pickle, like the “Gherkin” in London.

Scale-model exhibits on the ground floor help you envision what the final product will look like. You can also watch the workers as they create sculptures, carve decorative architectural details and do the heavy construction on this busy site, with hard-hat laborers bustling around the site. It’s really a busy, productive area.