The Glory Façade: The Front Door Still to Come
Why is it significant?
Stand on the pavement of Carrer de Mallorca and look across at the side of the basilica facing you. Columns, scaffolding, a few bronze doors, and above them towers soaring into the air... but something is missing. This is meant to be the front of the church, and the front has not been built yet.
Key Facts
| Place | The Glory Façade: The Front Door Still to Come |
|---|---|
| Address | Carrer de Mallorca 401, 08013 Barcelona, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.40330, 2.17560 |
| Part of Walk | Gaudí's Endless Temple to Domènech's Garden Hospital: Sagrada Família & Sant Pau, Barcelona |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand on the pavement of Carrer de Mallorca and look across at the side of the basilica facing you. Columns, scaffolding, a few bronze doors, and above them towers soaring into the air... but something is missing. This is meant to be the front of the church, and the front has not been built yet.
This will be the Glory Façade, the main entrance and the largest of the three façades. Gaudí knew he would never see it. He left drawings and ideas for it: death, judgement, hell below, glory above, and a vast porch held up by columns, crowded with the virtues and the sins of humanity. Generations of architects since his death have been working out how to turn those ideas into stone.
Some of it is already here. Look at the great bronze doors of the central portal, made by the sculptor Josep Maria Subirachs. They carry the Lord's Prayer in Catalan, and the line give us this day our daily bread is repeated in fifty languages. If you look carefully you may find your own.
And then there is the staircase problem. The design calls for a monumental flight of steps rising from the street towards this entrance. To build it as imagined, the steps would have to cross Carrer de Mallorca and land on the block where you are standing, a block full of apartment buildings, where families have lived for decades. The basilica's foundation and the City have been talking about it for years, and many residents are understandably nervous. It is the oldest question in this neighbourhood: who gets to live next door to an unfinished masterpiece?
So enjoy this side while it still looks like a construction site. In a few decades, it may be the most photographed doorway in Europe. Now walk left along Carrer de Mallorca to the corner with Carrer de Sardenya, where a small brick building with a roof like a wave sits in the shadow of the towers.