I’d like to touch here on a subject I rarely take up – probably because I don’t feel entirely confident in it. I mean architecture and its magic...

Let me begin by saying that I’ve never been particularly enchanted by this art form. Not that I haven’t seen it – by now I’ve travelled quite a bit across Europe, and even beyond. But what doesn’t want to speak to you simply doesn’t. The French glass pyramids, the German pretentious towers, even the Italian cathedrals – all leave me cold. Let’s not even mention the American or Asian skyscrapers – especially once you see the holes that begin just a few streets away...

Or at least, that’s how it was – until recently. I mean a few years ago, when I laid eyes on the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Honestly, if someone else had told me this, I’d never have believed that a building could move you to tears. But I experienced it myself – and what is, simply is, even if you spend a hundred years trying to figure it out. Huh, but how… why… what’s going on here?

Let’s start with a bit of background. The Sagrada Familia is the most famous creation of the incomparable Antoni Gaudí (accent on the last syllable) – an architect who has no real successors, likely for the simple reason that his buildings don’t fit into any known or imitable form. This is a massive cathedral, still unfinished, although it has been under construction for over a hundred years (Gaudí himself completed only a tiny part of his plan before dying – struck by a tram, what injustice! – at the age of 75 in 1927). The cathedral has survived more than a few shocks (not earthquakes – ideological ones), the worst of which was the civil war, during which it came within a hair’s breadth of being destroyed. (Some overly zealous atheists were determined to blow it up – and only the clever idea of another soldier, who proposed installing machine guns on the high walkways, a hundred meters above ground, to better shoot at the damned fascists, cooled the zeal of the revolutionaries. Still, they wouldn’t give up so easily, and to soothe their rage, they set fire to Gaudí’s workshop next door – so today, none of his original plans survive.)

George Orwell himself, who at the time was a correspondent in Spain, claimed that it was the ugliest building he had ever seen (who knows what winds were blowing through his soul, poor man). After the war, however, construction resumed – slowly at first – and today, the cathedral is beginning to reveal something of its original monumental intent, even though only the southern façade remains in Gaudí’s style. Everything else is now being built according to very different tastes, though the core idea remains intact.

But enough history. What no historical account can capture is the unimaginable delicacy of this structure – which, though it towers over 130 meters high, looks as if it’s made of lace. You see it from outside and can’t help but think of something sweet and light – cotton candy, for instance. You step inside – and suddenly you feel like you’ve entered a forest. You climb the towers – and you long to fly. That, you want to say, is faith caught in stone – delicate like a breath on a frosty morning, and yet more indestructible than all the modern-day bragging about aluminum towers or space shuttles…

We stood there staring for a good fifteen minutes before we even dared to get in line for tickets (one reason the construction is progressing so slowly is that it’s funded solely by donations from believers and the sale of those very same entry tickets). Then we walked and looked everywhere – getting a bit dusty and smudged in the process (the workers keep building day and night, undisturbed by the clicking of tourist cameras). Later, we sat for a long time on the benches in front of the southern façade, trying to identify the thousands of figures carved into it… As if! A camel would pass through the eye of a needle sooner than… That unimaginable creative power is simply not granted to us – even if we’re not quite as atheist as the boys from the war. And so we sat, clicking our tongues and trying to absorb at least a little of the beauty that, they say, will one day save the world…

And then we left and continued our tourist odyssey, a little subdued by our own smallness – but also endlessly happy that, if only for a moment, we had touched something real, something unrepeatable. Because – who knows – maybe there is some truth in those words about beauty.

Who’s to say?

April 2007