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The Sacrada Familia cathedral of Barcelona, Spain, was the life work of architect Antoni Gaudí, who designed several other prominent buildings in this seacoast city and set the pattern for its emergence as a center of contemporary art and architecture. This is all the more remarkable when one considers that Gaudí was hired to design this new church in 1883 at the age of 31. He spent the next forty two years working on its design and construction. As a young man Gaudi was known as a party goer who socialized with the rich and powerful families of Barcelona and rode to the construction site in a carriage, conferring with his foremen dressed in top hat and black gloves. But during the four decades that followed, Gaudi became more and more involved in his masterwork. Toward the end of his life he took up residence within the unfinished church and lost all interest in fashion or even other building projects. When he was run over by a passing street car in front of the cathedral at the age of 74 in 1926, people mistook him for a homeless beggar.

Today work on the Sacrada Familia continues more than one hundred and twenty years after Gaudi set his hands and his imagination to work upon it. One of the things that makes a visit here worthwhile is the opportunity to see how such a massive undertaking has evolved across the decades, and how it represents a graceful merging of the imagination, the science of engineering, and the passion of a deep faith. The Sacrada Familia is very much a statement of faith in stone. Moreover, Gaudi's vision of an architecture that renders glory to God even as it celebrates the beauty of the natural world appeals to citizens of the 21st century as much as it did to those of the 19th century when the work was begun.