Continuing from the last, it seems like the right time to talk about Architecture. Our trip was bookended by trips to spectacular churches (for a slightly expansive definition of "church"), so let's talk about both of them, with a couple of topical digressions related to them.
On the one hand, early in our trip to Spain we took the train out to Toledo.
(A recurring refrain here: when in Spain, take the train. The trains are great, and make our American expectations look pretty pathetic by comparison. They're clean, modern, fast, run on time, and even have pretty comfortable seats. Toledo is an easy half hour or so from Madrid, and runs frequently.)
Now, let's set the stage here. Toledo is a lovely town, but you talk about it as a tourist, you're mostly talking about old Toledo, which is a magnificent example of a well-fortified medieval city. Part of what makes it so well-fortified is that it is elevated. So, so elevated.
Many of the tourists took the easy way, calling a cab or taking a bus, but Kate and I are walkers. So we valiantly climbed all the way up -- which is I-don't-know how many feet of elevation, but it's a mile or two of Pretty Freaking Steep. And the old city itself is, to say the least, hilly: if you go, be prepared to spend a good deal of time walking up and down and up and down.
That said, it's a beautiful maze of history, nestled amongst all the tourist trappery. There are a bunch of historical sites, and the one that sucked us in for a couple of hours was the Catedral Primada -- Toledo Cathedral.
It's a Cathedral, so you expect it to be pretty large, and it is very much that. We rented the audioguide tablets, which was a fine investment, and it probably took us two hours to explore the place.
What's most fun about it is the sheer variety of architecture. Period cathedrals typically weren't completed in a decade, or even a lifetime; in practice, this one shows elements from its medieval roots, alongside sections that are High Baroque.
While I am not generally a fan of the Baroque, those late additions are probably the most spectacular part of the whole thing. They punched a hole in the ceiling, adding a new window, surrounding that hole with sculpted whimsical angels loitering around the gap, and the resulting light illuminates a gloriously over-the-top altarpiece known as El Transparente. It's extravagant in that very Baroque way, but really quite beautiful.
Beyond that, the place is full of lovely nooks and crannies: lots of little chapels, as well as a Chapterhouse with a huge Renaissance mural lining the entire place.
The postscript to our adventure in Toledo was that I accidentally told Google to take us to the bus station, instead of the train station that I intended. This led to the horrifying but hilarious discovery, far too late, that there are escalators all the way up the side of the old city on that side. (Imagine Porter Station's big brother.) It's a longer walk from the train station, but escalators!
So overall:
- Toledo is well worth a visit (I haven't even scratched the dozen other things to see there).
- You must do the Cathedral if you're in Toledo; I recommend the audio guided tour, and allow enough time to poke around it.
- If you like walking but don't look forward to All the Stairs, walk around to the far side and take the escalators.
Okay, so on to Barcelona. At the other end of our trip, we are now there for five days.
Barcelona is, to a large degree, the City of Gaudi, the century-ago architect whose distinctive work defines much of the town. We saw two of his best-known constructions, Park Guell and the Sagrada Familia.
Everyone told me that you have to go see Park Guell, and I can kind of see why. It's a monumental and lovely folly: an attempt to build a moderately high-end village, marrying practicality and artistic beauty, about a century ago.
Suffice it to say, it failed commercially; the displays inside it talk a little about why, including the lack of public transit to somewhere quite so out of the way. So the city bought it, turned it into a park, and you can now visit, for a fee. (Reservations strongly recommended; far as I can tell, it usually isn't possible to get in day-of.)
If we hadn't done Toledo, I would be talking about how remarkably hilly Park Guell is -- again, a lot of stairs and ramps are involved, and I don't recommend it to those who don't like a bit of a hike. (One of the attractions, the Hill of Three Crosses, is the highest point, and we were feeling the effort by the time we got there.) But compared to Toledo, it was relatively straightforward.
Some parts of it are really quite gorgeous -- in particular, the officially "monumental" section in the middle. There's an enormous, open, elevated oval space in the middle, big enough for a bullfight, half surrounded by tiled benches (the tiling done in an intentionally whimsical style, pottery shards continually shifting artistic style as you wander along the benches). That's nice -- but underneath it, far more impressive, is a huge expanse of columns holding it up, in what almost feels like a huge shaded ballroom, open on three sides, with sea scenes along the top.
That drove home the two characteristics of Gaudi's work: he loved curves, and he loved nature. He was brilliant at fusing those two impulses in many ways.
All that said, Park Guell suffered from (as noted in my earlier outline) Too Many Tourists. They limit the number of entry tickets (thank heavens), but the result is still awfully crowded. And while there are many cool things in the park, it's sufficiently out of the way, and those things are scattered around such a large area (this was supposed to be a housing development, after all), that I'm on the fence about whether it was worth the outing,
But that brings us to today's trip, to the Sagrada Familia. That also had Too Many Tourists, but this time I don't care, because it is truly one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.
The Sagrada was Gaudi's primary life's work: he spent over 40 years on it, knowing that he was merely going to be able to get it started. Nearly a century after his death, it is still under extremely active construction, and is getting within shooting distance of being finished in the next decade or so. (The original target was 2026, the centenary of Gaudi's accidental death, but then Pandemic happened.)
It isn't a cathedral -- indeed, they worked on it for over a century before it was even consecrated -- but it's cathedral scale, both in size and time. Like Toledo, it's a colossal undertaking, spanning generations of hard work, and it shows.
Gaudi was wise enough to realize that he had to build a long-lasting team, and give them freedom to work, so he designed the bold strokes of the cathedral -- its general shape and architectural intent -- but left all the artistic touches to his successors. The result is a building that, despite being over a century old, feels profoundly modern in a host of ways, from the intensely brutal modern artistic style on the Passion entrance (Gaudi himself oversaw the Nativity entrance, full of animals and plants) to the intensely colorful but abstract stained glass surrounding the interior.
Everything was designed with intent -- our tour guide (it's worth getting the English tour) explained details like the fact that the central Jesus tower is "only" going to be 172 meters high, because Barcelona's highest hill is 178 meters, and man should not build anything greater than God. The building is surrounded by twelve towers for the apostles, four for the gospels, plus one each for Mary and the last-to-by-completed Jesus.
The inside is much more open than the Toledo Cathedral, intentionally -- Gaudi rejected standard Gothic arches, instead pioneering enormous, split catenary arches that allowed him to push the ceiling way up. This leaves room for things like an 800-person choir a couple of stories up, and space for 6000 people inside.
We did take one of the tower tours, and that was the only bit that wasn't a win for me, mainly because I'm mildly acrophobic and OMG even the lower towers are Very High Up. Each one has an elevator to get you up to the top, from which you can see the city (through fairly small windows), but then it's 400 very narrow stairs down, the last 150 or so in a super-tight spiral staircase with no railing in the middle, leaving me close to a panic attack. Kate enjoyed it, and suspect many others would as well, but it's not compatible with fear of heights.
But overall, an even more amazing experience than Toledo Cathedral, one of the major highlights of the trip. If you like inspirational (or even just plain cool) architecture, and especially if you like poking at architecture that is full of cool details, it's a must-see.
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