00:00Construction of the Sagrada Familia was begun at the initiative of this Barcelona-born book merchant, and you'll be unsurprised
00:06to learn, extremely defout Catholic called Joseph Maria Bocabella.
00:10He came up with this idea that he was basically going to make a replica of this lovely little shrine
00:17that he found in Loretto, but he initially employed this other architect, didn't get along with him, and fired the
00:25guy and brought on Gaudi, aged just 31 years old at the time.
00:30And according to legend, actually, Bocabella dreamed that his replacement architect would have piercing blue eyes, and then he met
00:37Gaudi, who had such eyes, and he was just like, yep, interview over, it's you.
00:42This is the thing, despite being young.
00:44Maybe they met on Hinge.
00:45Yeah, exactly, yeah.
00:47Just got straight off the app.
00:49But despite being incredibly young, Gaudi had these huge and confident ideas, and over a period of just a couple
00:56of weeks, he'd already changed this project from being a very small thing.
00:59Into being his version of the Sagrada Familia, which was that it would be a huge Bible in stone, telling
01:06all the history and the mystery of the Christian faith, and even more, he hoped that the Sagrada Familia would
01:12be a link, like a quasi-literal link between heaven and earth, which is why he designed that massive 172
01:19.5-meter tower of Jesus Christ that's just being unveiled at the moment.
Comments