The most amazing building in the world was started in 1883 - still not finished building it

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I cannot hear about this place without instantly hearing the Alan Parsons Project song of the same name in my head, first track off the album “Gaudi”. Over the top bombastic–I was always very fond of it.

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In the year 97401476e10 the Sagrada Familia cathedral will cover all of Earth’s surface, yet it will be still to be finished.

Post human self replicating fractal machines will carry on Gaudi’s dream of an all expanding, never ending temple of inhuman proportions.

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Of course, the bird’s eye view doesn’t tell us much about the insane genius complexity of the details that make his works so unique. Here’s one interior view of the roof with its papercraft-Giger take on nature, for instance.

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Never mind, I was incorrect.

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That’s a very irritating gif. Of a wonderfult work of art. I went there about 25 years ago. It wasn’t quite so famous then as it is now. I shovelled all my Spanish money in the collection box along with some dolalrs and pounds. I went to the top of one of the towers up a wonderful spiral staircase. At the top I encountered a Japanese tourist and that’s when I really knew Sagrada Familia was special; this guy festooned in cameras as all Japanese tourists used to be was just sitting there in a sort of trance gazing out over the unfinished inner part of the basilica, cameras forgotten. We sat there in silence for quite a few minutes.

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The Catholic Church do not pays any property taxes in Spain.

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Ah, good point. I stand corrected.

I had no idea there was so much more left to do. There’s no way it’ll be done in my lifetime
 which is kind of amazing to think about.

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@telecinese
This interior shot is not part of Gaudi’s designs. After he was killed (hit by a tram) the building of the Cathedral was halted for a number of years while the city decided what to do with the part build Cathedral. Once it was decided to continue a number of architects were commissioned to interpret whatever plans Gaudi had left (a number of fairly detailed physical models), design those interiors he had not yet designed and to design the two façades he had not yet worked on. You can tell this likely is not directly designed by Gaudi, the design is much too angular and geometric than almost all of Gaudi’s own work. Still cool as hell though.

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If they actually finish in about 150 years that will be pretty quick for a European Cathedral

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Ah, my Mecca.
My favorite visit was my first visit when the interior was almost completely filled with scaffolding – something about the organic building with the regimented scaffold being lit by stained glass just hit my fancy.

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I didn’t even need to read the entire title to know what building was the subject
truly a story (and building) for the ages.

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It’s Notre Dame gone Babylon 5 built by the world’s most prolific pro-life movement.

In case anybody thinks @BuckmasterFresh is not quite serious, here are some examples:

Cologne Cathedral, in construction 1248 - 1880 (plus a lot of repairs after WW2):

Milan Cathedral, 1386 - 1965:

Ulm Minster, 1377 - 1890:

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I was there last November. Interesting that there are buildings next to the cathedral fir the workers that Gaudi designed in his own style.

Basilica*, but your point stands. They’re still working on St. John the Divine in NYC.

*My recollection (without bothering to look it up to make certain) is that Sagrada Familia and Sacre Coeur - both of them basilicas - originated in right-wing movements. But, having visited both, I prefer not to dwell on it.

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I was there in late '04 and really can’t remember much about the interior, other than that they were working on it. I don’t think it was fully enclosed.

My computer’s desktop image is a photo of the ceiling, similar to the one posted above, but it’s not how I remember seeing it (though it may have very well looked like that).

It’s one place that can simultaneously induce both claustrophobia and acrophobia.

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As something completely unrelated, could BB put a little more of a spacer between cycling GIFs and the associated video? If I want to watch the video, I find having the GIF constantly playing directly underneath more than a little distracting.

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What about making the animated GIFs playable on demand?

Perhaps something server-side that if an animated gif is uploaded it shows instead a “thumbnail” with only the first frame, and perhaps a click-me-to-play icon overlaid over it? Could be done via either an iframe or a little piece of javascript


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