A masonry built to last: what the Sagrada Familia looked like when Gaudi still had blueprints (photo)
An archival photograph from 1906 vividly reveals the beginning of the most epic and protracted construction project in the history of European architecture. The photo captures the early stages of construction of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, when only vacant lots and scattered village houses surrounded the future sanctuary. By this point, the brilliant Antoni Gaudí had been overseeing the construction for over twenty years, having completely redesigned his predecessor's initial, modest design. The image clearly reveals only the first sketches of the Nativity façade, which the master built literally by intuition, often abandoning precise plans in favor of pure improvisation. Who would have thought back in 1906 that these lonely stone walls would take 144 years to complete and would only be finally completed on the centenary of the great Catalan's death? 
