Gaudí's crypt at Colonia Güell

Eusebi Güell, patron of the Catalan arts, commissioned Gaudí to build a church for the workers’ village of the textile factory he had founded in 1890 in Santa Coloma de Cervelló, near Barcelona.

The church was left unfinished for lack of funds, but the crypt gives you an idea of what it might have been. In this building Gaudí used his most characteristic architectural technique, the catenary arch, and took nature as his source of inspiration, giving the church organic shapes that blend it into its surroundings. The materials he used were black basalt, brick and cement. Crosses, fish, alphas and omegas cover the façade, a reminder of his devotion to the Catholic faith. Inside, a series of ribbed arches spreads across the ceiling, but what I personally liked most were the pews arranged in a circle, also designed by Antoni Gaudí.

Somehow this crypt reminded us of the Sagrada Família. And apparently Gaudí once said: ‘Sin la prueba a gran escala de las formas alabeadas, helicoidales en las columnas y paraboloides en los muros y bóvedas que he hecho en la Colonia Güell, no me habría atrevido a utilizarlas en el templo de la Sagrada Familia.’ (Without the large-scale test of the warped forms – helicoidal in the columns and paraboloid in the walls and vaults – that I carried out at the Colonia Güell, I would not have dared to use them in the church of the Sagrada Família.) So this unfinished project must have been his main inspiration.

Gaudí’s crypt is the star attraction, but it’s also lovely to wander around the old village and see what was one of the most progressive industrial colonies of its day. We were especially taken with the school and the schoolmaster’s house next to it.

Every 12 October the Fiesta del Modernismo (Festival of Modernisme, or Catalan Art Nouveau) is held: a street re-enactment of scenes from everyday life in the village a hundred years ago.