Pope Leo XIV is traveling to Barcelona to inaugurate the Sagrada Família’s final tower

Barcelona’s Sagrada Família will mark the symbolic completion of its final tower on June 10, when Pope Leo XIV travels to the city to bless the tower in a mass coinciding with the centennial of architect Antoni Gaudí’s death. Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez will be among those in attendance. The basilica has been under construction for 144 years, but it has been open to visitors throughout most of that time. However, remaining architectural and decorative work is expected to continue through 2034.

The tower, the basilica’s 18th and final one, was completed in February, making the Sagrada Família the tallest church in the world at 172.5 meters (566 feet). It is topped by a four-arm cross made of glass and white ceramic, designed to shine day and night, a specification that Gaudí insisted upon. A devout Catholic, Gaudí designed the tower to stop just short of the nearby Montjuïc hill's 177 meters (581 feet), holding to his belief that no human construction should seek to surpass the work of God.

The new tower is the center, tallest one with the large white cross on top.

What remains is primarily the Glory Façade, the largest and final entrance to the church, on the south side of the building, along with a monumental staircase and park. Completing that portion of Gaudí’s original plan would require demolishing two residential blocks, a contentious prospect in a city facing a severe housing crisis. Barcelona’s city council has been in talks with roughly 200 affected residents over possible relocation options, but no dates have been announced.

A view of inside the new tower during a media preview in May.

Construction on the Sagrada Família began in 1882 under architect Francisco de Paula del Villar, who envisioned a Gothic Revival church. Within a year, Gaudí—then 30 years old—took over and reimagined the project entirely, conceiving a structure modeled on the natural world, with columns branching like trees and geometries drawn from nature. He famously told the parish he would complete it in ten years, a promise he spent the rest of his life revising. “My client is not in a rush,” he later said, referring to God. However, Gaudi never saw the building completed, having died in 1926 after being hit by a streetcar in Barcelona. He is buried in the church’s crypt.

A view from a form, where visitors are allowed to stand, in the new platform looking down into the nave of the basilica.

The Spanish Civil War halted construction between 1936 and 1939, and anarchist groups destroyed many of the original designs and models he had left behind. Work resumed in the 1950s, with architects and craftsmen reconstructing Gaudí’s intentions from photographs, plaster models, and memory. However, the project’s extreme complexity made it widely considered unfinishable for much of its history. “The challenge is to do what Gaudí wanted as quickly and efficiently as possible, using current technology, without losing the essence of the handcrafted piece,” Jordi Barbany, a stonemason whose family has been working on the basilica since its foundation, told The Art Newspaper. “We dreamed about Gaudí many times because of the ordeal of dealing with such difficult work. Without speaking to him, we had to understand what he wanted.”