Church of Colònia Güell

Interesting facts

The porch in front of the crypt is the first place Gaudí used hyperbolic paraboloid vaults, often cited as the first such vaults in architectural history.

Gaudí's hanging model stood about four metres tall at 1:10 scale in a shed beside the site; it was rebuilt in Stuttgart in 1982 under Frei Otto.

On 19 July 1936, at the start of the Spanish Civil War, the crypt was attacked and set on fire, destroying many of Gaudí's plans and the original model.

The colours were meant to rise with the building: dark basalt and burnt brick like the earth below, reddish brick like the pines, then greens and blues for the sky.

Gaudí intended the crypt to stand for Christ's tomb and the unbuilt upper church for Calvary, together echoing the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

The holy-water stoups are giant seashells from the Philippines, said to have reached Gaudí through the shipping line of Güell's father-in-law.

A ceramic panel over the door shows the four cardinal virtues with homely symbols, Prudence holding a piggy bank and Temperance a wine porró and bread knife.

The porch keystone bears a Trinity monogram in colour: a yellow P for the Father, a red F for the Son and an orange S for the Spirit.

Inside, round brick pillars alternate with leaning columns of basalt brought from Castellfollit de la Roca in northern Catalonia.

The full church was planned as an oval about 25 by 63 metres with five naves, several towers and a central dome some 40 metres high.

Why it is worth it

The crypt at Colònia Güell is where Antoni Gaudí worked out, at full scale, the structural ideas that would later carry the Sagrada Família. It stands on a wooded slope above the company town that the industrialist Eusebi Güell built for his workers in Santa Coloma de Cervelló, just west of Barcelona. Güell commissioned the church in 1898; building began only in 1908, and when the project was halted in 1914, only the lower level had been built. It was completed as a place of worship in 1915 to 1917, and the upper church, with its towers and a planned central dome some forty metres high, never rose.

What exists is therefore a fragment, but an extraordinary one. Gaudí designed it with a hanging model: cords weighted with small sacks of lead shot, suspended from the ceiling of a workshop so that gravity drew out the ideal lines of compression. Photographed and turned upside down, the web of catenaries became the geometry of the church. The result is a building with almost no vertical line. Columns of brick and roughly hewn basalt lean at different angles, the vaults twist into hyperbolic surfaces, and the porch outside is a low forest of tilted supports.

Inside, the crypt is dim and intimate, half sunk into the hillside so that it seems to grow out of the ground. Coloured light comes through some twenty stained-glass windows, one of them shaped like a butterfly's wing, and the benches with kneelers were designed by Gaudí himself, a rare surviving set of his church furniture. A restoration begun in 2000 made the building easier to visit and opened the roof, which would have been the floor of the unbuilt upper church.

The crypt is one of the seven properties grouped as the Works of Antoni Gaudí on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The surrounding workers' colony, with its Catalan modernista buildings, is worth walking through as well, since the church was meant to crown Güell's industrial settlement.

Getting there

The crypt is in Santa Coloma de Cervelló, about 2.4 km from Sant Boi de Llobregat and roughly 20 to 25 minutes by FGC suburban train from Plaça d'Espanya in Barcelona; get off at Colònia Güell station and follow the painted footprints to the visitor centre. Barcelona-El Prat Airport (BCN) is about 8.5 km away.

From the encyclopaedia

The Church of Colònia Güell is an unfinished work by Antoni Gaudí. It was built as a place of worship for the people on a hillside in the namesake company town in Santa Coloma de Cervelló, near Barcelona. Colònia Güell was the brainchild of Count Eusebi de Güell; who enlisted the help of architect Antoni Gaudí in 1898. However, work was not started until 1908, 10 years after commission. The plan for the building consisted of constructing two naves, an upper and a lower, two towers, and one forty-meter-high central dome. In 1914, the Güell family halted construction due to the death of Count Güell. At the time, the lower nave was almost complete so between the years of 1915 and 1917, it was completed and readied for use.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Church of Colònia Güell

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

On these lists

From the encyclopaedia