The temple of the Sagrada Familia began to be built in 1882 on a plot of land in the Eixample dret (right Eixample) of Barcelona. Antoni Gaudí designed the Sagrada Familia basilica to be the tallest building in the city.

1. The original project is not by Antoni Gaudí, the project was the idea of Francesc de Paula Villar, who designed a church in keeping with the period, of a neo-Gothic type. After a year of construction, it passed into the hands of Gaudí, who dedicated 43 years to the project. He changed its dimensions with the idea that the entire construction would be cleaner and allow for maximum natural light.

2. Inside the temple there is not a single straight line, because everything is built imitating the architecture of nature. (“The straight line is from man; the curve is from God,” said Gaudí). The columns that support the temple represent trees that rise from the floor to the ceiling and whose trajectory is calculated arithmetically.

3. Once finished, the Basilica will have 18 towers: the 12 shortest ones represent the apostles, the 4 tallest ones the evangelists, another taller one represents the Virgin Mary and, finally, the tallest one with the cross, Jesus Christ.

4. Why will it measure 172.5m? Because Gaudí did not want to exceed the height of Montjuic, since he considered that the work of man could not surpass the work of God. This tower will have a great vertical disproportion, with 18 meters in diameter and 60 meters high.

5. On the Façade of the Passion there is an interesting Sudoku painting, with the uniqueness that the sum of its numbers (whether vertically, horizontally or diagonally) always gives 33, the age of Christ when he died.

6. During the Civil War some revolutionaries burned the crypt and also destroyed Gaudí's original plans; it took 16 years to reassemble the pieces of the original model.

7. The Sagrada Familia will be the tallest church in the world in 2026.

8. The remains of Gaudí, who was killed by a tram at the age of 74, lie in the chapel of the Virgen del Carmen.

9. “The Expiatory Temple of the Sagrada Familia is made by the people and is reflected in them,” said Antoni Gaudí. Since the beginning of the project it has been self-financing exclusively thanks to the generosity of thousands of travelers, but it is not only financed by donations, the entrance price is used to pay for its construction.

10. Since the beginning of construction, 50 different types of stones have been used as main elements of the structure of the Basilica. The bulk of the construction is located 80 km from Barcelona and occupies the area of two football fields, with a huge warehouse of materials that uses a new technique that allows the pace of the works to be multiplied by 10.

The Sagrada Familia has become a world reference and a true icon of art. In 2005, UNESCO declared the Nativity façade and the Crypt a World Heritage Site.