The Sagrada Familia, the yet unfinished minor basilica that is both Barcelona’s best-known landmark and the architectural masterwork of the Servant of God Antoni Gaudí, is slowly (but surely) coming to completion. This coming Friday, the towers of the Evangelists Luke and Mark will be lit up for the first time.
The Sagrada Familia has been under construction for more than a century. Its first stone was laid on March 1882. It was consecrated on November 7, 2010, by Pope Benedict XVI, who proclaimed it a minor basilica.
This coming Friday, the basilica will hold its traditional Christmas Concert, with a program consisting of international carols structured in three separate suites – one featuring Western European carols, a second one including Eastern European carols, and the last one with all-time international Christmas favorites. The concert will be streamed online at the basilica’s website. As soon as the Christmas Concert is finished, the pinnacles of the towers of Evangelists Luke and Mark will be lit up, marking the completion of this phase of the construction.
As explained at the basilica’s website, the towers are topped with their respective figures of the Tetramorph, according to biblical traditional imagery: an ox for Luke, and a lion for Mark.
The towers will be lit up every evening, from Saturday, December 17, 2022, through January 8, 2023, from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.
In December 2021, the tower of the Virgin Mary was completed. Now, as the construction of the towers of the Evangelists Luke and Mark is finished, three of the six central towers are complete.
The Sagrada Familia has 18 towers in total: 12 for the apostles, four for the evangelists, one for the Virgin Mary and the tallest one, rising 172.5 meters high, for Jesus Christ.
The reason this is the highest tower is obvious. But the reasons why the tower is not any taller are even more interesting.
The highest hill in Barcelona, Montjuïc, rises to 177 meters above the sea level. Gaudí firmly believed architecture and nature should harmoniously coexist. This is a principle that permeates all his work. However, he would always give nature the seat of honor, convinced as he was that human ingenuity should never yield to hubris. God’s work, nature itself, is always of a “higher” order. The tallest tower in his church could never be taller than the mountain overlooking the city.
