The Sagrada Família

What has just happened, which changes the visit

For a century the basilica was the building that was never going to be finished. That is no longer quite true, and the dates are recent enough that every older account of it is wrong.

• Late October 2025 — the first arm of the cross took the building to 162.9 metres and it overtook Ulm Minster in Germany, which had been the tallest church in the world since 1890.
• 20 February 2026 — the upper arm of the cross was installed on the Tower of Jesus Christ, completing it structurally and bringing the basilica to 172.5 metres.
• 10 June 2026 — the completed tower was blessed at a papal inauguration, on the hundredth anniversary of Gaudí's death.

That height was not chosen for the record. Gaudí set it deliberately a little below Montjuïc, the hill behind the port, on the principle that nothing made by a man should stand higher than the work of God.

What this does not mean is that the building is finished. Headlines in June 2026 said so and they were wrong. The structure and the exterior of the central tower are complete; a great deal is not.

What is still missing

• The Glory façade, which is meant to be the main entrance, with four more towers and something like a hundred sculptures. The architects put it at roughly a decade of work and have described finishing it as more a wish than a plan.
• Interior work on the central tower, running through 2027 and 2028. The tower is not open to visitors, and the viewing point planned inside the arms of the cross — which will hold about eleven people at a time — is not expected to admit anybody before the end of 2027.
• The stairway. Gaudí's design requires a monumental flight of steps and an esplanade in front of the Glory façade, which means building across Carrer de Mallorca. Historic versions of the plan would have cleared whole blocks of flats. The construction board has narrowed the demand to essentially one building, with residents rehoused on a plot the basilica bought in 2019, but there is no agreement: formal talks between the council and residents opened in June 2026 and had not produced a settlement by the autumn. The board says it will not give up the stairway; the architects say the building cannot be completed without it. Anyone reading this some months after it was written should check where the argument stands.

How it was built, and by whom

Work began in 1882 to a neo-Gothic design by Francisco de Paula del Villar. Gaudí took over in 1883, aged thirty-one, and redesigned it completely. He worked on it for forty-three years and spent the last of them living on site.

At his death in 1926 only the crypt, the apse and one of the three façades stood. Work continued under his collaborators until the Civil War in 1936, when the workshop was burnt and the plaster models were smashed — which is why the models on display now are reconstructions, and why the design has been argued over ever since. Older accounts saying construction halted when Gaudí died have the wrong event by ten years.

The three façades, which are by three different hands

This is the thing most worth knowing before going, because the contrast is startling and unsignposted.

• The Nativity façade, on the east side, is Gaudí's own, built in his lifetime, and it is the part inscribed by UNESCO. It is dense, encrusted and naturalistic, with the three portals of Charity, Faith and Hope. The central column of the Charity portal carries the genealogy of Christ. The Hope portal has the flight into Egypt, with a boat and St Joseph.
• The Passion façade, on the west side, is the work of Josep Maria Subirachs, carved between 1987 and 2005 — gaunt, angular, stripped-back figures that look nothing like Gaudí's. It divides visitors sharply, and it is the one nobody is warned about.
• The Glory façade is the unbuilt one described above.

Inside

The interior was completed and consecrated as a minor basilica by Benedict XVI on 7 November 2010, and it is the reason to go even for people who find the outside overwrought. The columns branch overhead like a forest canopy, carrying the vaults on leaning, twisting supports that Gaudí worked out by hanging weighted strings at Colònia Güell and photographing the model upside down. The windows are glazed to throw warm light on the Nativity side in the morning and cool light on the Passion side in the afternoon, so the hour of the visit changes what is seen.

The museum in the basement holds the reconstructed models, drawings, and photographs of the work and of Gaudí's funeral. Gaudí himself is buried in the crypt, in the chapel of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

The permit, which is a good story

The basilica was built for 136 years without a building licence. Nobody had ever issued one. The matter was settled with the city council in 2018, on terms that included a substantial contribution to transport and street works around the site, and Barcelona granted the licence on 7 June 2019.

Visiting

• Entry is by timed ticket and the time printed on it is the time to arrive. No other slot is admitted.
• Book well ahead through the basilica's own site. It sells out, and the resale sites that dominate search results are not the official one.
• A tower visit covers one tower only — Nativity or Passion — and is by lift up and stairs down. It is not suitable for anyone with limited mobility, children under six are not admitted, and towers close in bad weather with no refund.
• Shoulders and knees covered, as in any working church.

Older accounts suggest a couple of hours. That is about right for the interior and the museum, and not enough if a tower is included.

Gaudí's other work in the city is on the Antoni Gaudí page, and general practicalities on the Barcelona page.