“Joyful day”: laying of the final piece of the central tower of the Sagrada Familia | Barcelona

The final piece of the central tower of Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia has been laid, bringing the church to its final height 144 years after work began.

After several days when it was too windy to work, the top of the 17-metre-high four-sided steel and glass cross was lifted into place at 11am on Friday, completing the tower dedicated to Jesus Christ. The 172.5-metre-high Sagrada Familia, to which Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí dedicated the last part of his life, is the tallest building in Barcelona and the tallest church in the world.

As the Catalan and Vatican flags were raised, Jordi Foley, the project’s chief architect, said: “It was a joyful and wonderful day for all the people who made it possible.”

A ceremony marking the completion of the tower – the tallest of the 18 towers designed by Gaudí – is scheduled to be held on the centenary of Gaudí’s death in 1926 on June 10, 16 years after the church was consecrated by Pope Benedict XVI.

The church is expected to be completed in about a decade with a stunning south-facing façade.

However, it was an emotional day for a city that has lived with Gaudí’s unfinished works for generations, and although there is still much work to be done, the temple now defines Barcelona’s skyline like the Eiffel Tower in Paris or the Empire State Building in New York.

For decades, it was a construction site open to the sky, where generations of construction workers and carpenters toiled around the tourists who eventually financed the construction. Only in the past fifteen years, since work began on the stunningly beautiful interior, has it looked more like a church than a construction site.

Here Gaudí’s geometric designs created an oasis of light, with delicate tree-like columns tapering to the ceiling, and the white stone interior was chosen in colors from the stained glass windows.

The basilica is loved and hated in equal measure by those who live in Barcelona. George Orwell called it “one of the ugliest buildings in the world” and lamented that the anarchists had not blown it up when they had the chance.

However, the anarchists destroyed Gaudí’s drawings and the plaster model, which was painstakingly reconstructed years later. In the late 1970s, Mark Bury, a New Zealand architect, modified rocket design software to realize Gaudí’s design.

To those who claim that the basilica is nothing like what was originally envisioned, Burri’s response is that Gaudí’s engineering is so precise that if there were any deviation from his plan, the building would collapse.

However, it is now the work of many hands. There are contrasting elements, particularly the Passion Facade, popularly known as the Darth Vader Facade, which is the work of sculptor Josep Maria Soubierachs, yet overall it is unambiguously the work of Gaudí.

Aside from finalizing the details of the main tower, three artists – Miquel Barcelo, Cristina Iglesias and Javier Marin – have been commissioned to provide designs for the Glory facade, which is expected to take another 10 years to complete.

The Sagrada Familia is the city’s most important tourist attraction, with about 5 million visitors a year and an annual income of about €150 million (£131 million), almost half of which has so far been spent on construction.