‘A joyful day’: final piece of Sagrada Familia’s central tower put in place

Completion of glass cross brings Antoni Gaudí’s church to maximum final height of 172.5m, 144 years after work began

The final piece of the central tower of Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia has been laid in place, bringing the church to its maximum final height 144 years after work began.

After several days when it has been too windy to work, the upper section of the 17 metre-high four-sided steel and glass cross was winched into position at 11am on Friday, completing the tower dedicated to Jesus Christ. At 172.5 metres, the Sagrada Familia, to which the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí devoted the later part of his life, is Barcelona’s tallest building and the world’s tallest church.

As the Catalan and Vatican flags were raised, Jordi Faulí, the chief architect for the project, said: “It’s been a joyful day, wonderful for all the people who have made it possible.”

A ceremony to mark the completion of the tower – the tallest of 18 conceived by Gaudí – is due to take place on the centenary of Gaudí’s death in 1926 on 10 June, 16 years after the church was consecrated by Pope Benedict XVI.

The end to the building at the church is expected in about a decade with the construction of a striking south-facing facade.

It was nevertheless a day full of emotion for a city that has lived with Gaudí’s unfinished work for generations and, although there remains much work to do, the temple now defines the Barcelona skyline as much as the Eiffel tower in Paris or the Empire State building in New York.

For decades it was a building site open to the skies, where generations of stone masons and carpenters worked around the tourists who have ultimately funded the construction. It’s only in the past 15 years, since work began on the breathtakingly beautiful interior, that it has felt more like a church than a building site.

Here Gaudí’s geometrical designs have created an oasis of light, with delicate, tree-like columns tapering off to the roof, the white stone of the interior picked out in colours from the stained glass windows.

The basilica is loved and loathed equally by those who live in Barcelona. George Orwell described it as “one of the most hideous buildings in the world” and regretted the anarchists did not blow it up when they had the chance.

The anarchists did, however, destroy Gaudí’s drawings and the plaster model, which years later was painstakingly reconstructed. In the late 1970s, Mark Burry, a New Zealand architect, adapted rocket design software to realise Gaudí’s design.

To those who claim the basilica is nothing like what was originally envisaged, Burry’s retort was that Gaudí’s geometry is so precise that should there be any deviation from his plan, the building would collapse.

It is, however, now the work of many hands. There are elements that jar, in particular the Passion façade, popularly known as Darth Vader façade, the work of the sculptor Josep Maria Subirachs, and yet overall it is unmistakably Gaudí’s work.

Aside from finishing the details of the main tower, three artists – Miquel Barceló , Cristina Iglesias and Javier Marín – have been commissioned to present designs for the Glory façade, which is expected to take a further 10 years to complete.

The Sagrada Familia is the city’s top tourist attraction, with about 5 million visitors a year and an annual income of roughly €150m (£131m), about half of which has so far been spent on construction.