The Sagrada Familia Church in Barcelona lights up its new towers
Barcelona (AFP) – The famous Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona celebrated, on Sunday, with light, the completion of construction work on the evangelical towers with which the monument heads toward the end of its construction process that began 141 years ago.
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The last two of these four 135-metre-high towers, dedicated to the evangelists Matthew and John, were completed at the end of September, with the installation of the massive white statues in the form of a human bust and an eagle crowning them respectively. .
The other two works, dedicated to the evangelists Luke and Mark, and surmounted by images of a bull and a lion, were completed last year.
This completes the ensemble dedicated to the Evangelists by the magnificent cathedral designed by the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, which will be the third tallest of the church’s towers once completed.
To celebrate this event, the Archbishop of Barcelona, Juan José Omella, blessed these structures located in the central part of the cathedral on Sunday afternoon, which were then lit up for the first time.
After the completion in 2021 of the Tower of Mary, which will be the second tallest tower in the cathedral, at 138 metres, and the Compound of the Evangelists, all that remains is to complete the Tower of Jesus Christ for the main relief. .
Designed by Gaudí as the highest point of the Sagrada Familia, at 172.5 metres, the builders plan to complete the Christ Tower in 2026, a date that coincides with the centenary of the architect’s death.
The cathedral construction committee had initially announced that the cathedral would be fully completed by 2026, but the COVID-19 pandemic slowed the project.
“If we didn’t have a big problem like the pandemic, the Sagrada Familia would be finished within a maximum of ten years,” its board chairman, Esteve Camps, told local newspaper La Vanguardia on Sunday.
© 2023 Agence France-Presse
