[Kilenaitor]

I'm Christian, so slightly different context going in, but I also found it profound. I've been to other churches and cathedrals (including the Vatican!) and they feel sterile by comparison. Stepping inside to the sight of a towering forest of stone and dazzling light is truly breathtaking. It made me genuinely emotional.

It's nothing like I've ever seen before so I'm surprised by the comments at the end of the article that make it seem like its originality has waned over the years. You can feel the conviction and passion that have been poured into it for over a century.

I can't wait to visit it again. I really love it.

[ralfd]

For me it was the lighting of the colored reflections which change troughout the day and through the seasons.

https://blog.sagradafamilia.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/c...

Our guide showed us on his phone pictures how the colors change in different months.

I never thought about how I would build a church to exemplify Gods creation, but after that I wondered about cathedrals out of glass or crystal. I must have raved like a mad man about the Sagrada to my friends who had chosen to stay in the hostel!

It made me appreciate cathedrals more. Like now they are are old and ancient, but imagine living in a medieval village and making a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to a big city and being dumb struck about the tallest building you have ever seen and architecture which is familiar but you could have never dreamed up.

[albertdessaint]

Wonderful, I didn’t take the time to go inside, I should have! Did you go to the sainte chapelle in Paris? Very beautiful with lot of light.

[wrsh07]

As someone who has loved sagrada familia since I went in, I think the experience of Sainte Chapelle is my second favorite (go first thing when it opens to have it to yourself) and is more underrated than sagrada familia^

Related/unrelated, part of my joy in the sagrada familia is that being a tourist feels essentially the same as being a pilgrim. If you get a chance to visit parc guell, you aren't exactly experiencing it as a park, but as a tour through the different ideas in the park. (Compare this with an unguided stroll through Central Park, where you and all of the other visitors are likely experiencing it as a park (the way it was intended)

^ I think! In my experience it's occasionally overlooked in a short trip to Paris, whereas if you're going to just see one Gaudi, make it the cathedral

[moomin]

If you’re not familiar with Gaudi’s life I think you’ll find it equally inspiring. He was extremely successful and heavily communist (He was always Christian for all that some think you need to be atheist to be communist), and ended his life living a functionally monastic life dedicated to this project, literally living in the crypt.

[BonitaPersona]

He definitely wasn't "heavily communist". He may have had some radical leftist tendencies on his youth, becoming more nuanced with age.

His only overtly political leanings with age became his catalan nationalism and devout catholicism.

I don't know why people keep stating lies on the internet with arrogance. Please stop lying.