Sagrada Família reaches new height as Barcelona celebrates Gaudí centenary

On February 20, 2026, a 17-meter summit cross was hoisted by crane atop Antoni Gaudí's Sagrada Família, making the Barcelona cathedral the tallest religious building in the world at 172.5 meters. Gaudí had designed the structure to remain 4.5 meters below the summit of Montjuïc hill to avoid surpassing "God's work." The building's history began in 1882 when Francesc de Paula Villar laid the first stone of a neo-Gothic church; Gaudí took over a year later and transformed it into a forest of stone merging nature and the divine. In June 1926, Gaudí was struck by a tramway and died at age 73, with only a quarter of the building completed. A decade later, anarchists burned his workshop, destroying notes, studies, and models, which architects later reconstructed from memory. On June 10, 2026, exactly a century after Gaudí's death, Pope Leo XIV will celebrate the first mass in the cathedral. The Gaudí Year, marking the centenary and the inauguration of the Jesus Christ tower, coincides with Barcelona's designation as World Capital of Architecture 2026. However, 144 years after construction began, the Sagrada Família remains unfinished: decorative work and the monumental staircase of the Glory façade are expected to continue until 2034.