Sagrada Família

Antoni Gaudí's Basílica de la Sagrada Família is the most ambitious act of devotional architecture of the modern age — a temple begun in 1882 and still, more than 140 years later, unfinished. Gaudí dissolved Gothic precedent into something entirely his own: hyperboloid vaults, tree-like columns that branch to hold the roof, and façades that read as sculpture before they read as structure. Knowing he would not live to see it finished, he reportedly answered the delay with faith: "My client is not in a hurry."

Since his death in 1926, successive architects have continued the basilica from his surviving models toward its intended eighteen spires. Consecrated by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 and inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list, it remains a working church and the most visited monument in Spain — a forest of stone where light, filtered through Gaudí's glass, becomes the building's true material.