Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Familia is the real name of Sagrada Famailia, Roman Catholic temple placed in Barcelona, Catalonia that is the most emblematic building of the modernisme and the most important work of the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí. Nevertheless at the first time he wasn’t working on it, because in 1882 when the temple started to be built the architect was Francisco de Paula, who designed a Gothic Revival temple, but one year later he resigned because of disagreement with the consultant architect of the man who gave the place for the construction. Then Gaudí assumed the project redesigning everything and creating a new and more overambitious building, but it was so ambitious that until today it hasn’t been finished and probably it won’t happen soon.
People has always use the adjective “great” to qualify what they consider most amazing, in that way we can say that the big size of the Burj Khalifa is an incredible achievement of engineering and definitely the skyscraper designed by Adrian Smith is great. In 2004 when it had started to be build was called Burj Dubai, because it didn’t have name yet and was in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, by the way Burj means “tower”. But on 4 January, 2010 in the inauguration it took the name of Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Sheik reigning in Abu Dhabi, Emirate that lent US$25 billions to Dubai for save the financial crisis of 2009 Also there was revealed the real magnitude of the building that with 828m of height became in the biggest building in the whole world exceeded to Taipei 101, that has the second place now with just 509m.
Faith can everything and the Muslims have could make a wonderful monument to their god Allah in the sacred city Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Masjid al-Haram is the name of the mosque where every year, just in the Hajj, around 2 millions faithful go to do the Tawaf, pilgrimage that all Muslim have to do at least once in his life. There is the Kaaba, “the House of God” where divine touches earthly; it has in its eastern corner the Black Stone. Tradition says that the mosque was built under orders from Allah, before the humanity’s creation, as a reflection in the earth of the worship’s place of the angels in the heaven, directly up of Kaaba. This was built by angels and hereinafter by Adam, the first man, who reconstructed it. Abraham was third and the last who reconstructed it with help of his son Ismael. The Black Stone located in the fourth corner of the Kaaba came from paradise and its black color is due to the sins of the men.
Middle Age is considerate for some people as a Dark Age because they think that culture had a backward step. But in the year 888 happened something that became a small town from Catalan Pyrenees in the most important cultural center in Europe for centuries. This town is Ripoll and what happened was that the Count Guifré el Pilós founded the Monestir de Santa Maria de Ripoll valued as the main building of Romanesque architecture. In spite of not be very known worldwide important things happened there, translation of many books were made in its scriptorium, the most amazing of the epoch, where in addition was written the Ripoll’s Bible that has numerous illustrations and a lot of introductory texts that make her in a kind of encyclopedia of the sacred text. Also in the monastery were took many important decisions since there studied several Popes and was usual the visit of different counts from Catalonia.
Another amazing mysterious city in Peru, this time Cahuachi a sacred place that was the capital of the political and religious power in the pre-Columbian culture Nazca, nevertheless, the city was founded before their appearing on century IV B.C. and later was took by them, who continued building it until convert it in the biggest mud’s city in the world. In spite of its big size it never was taken up completely because just the elite had right to live there, from this place they arranged everything and probably the famous Nazca Lines were planned in Cahuachi. The incredible pyramids, statues, walls, etc. everyone made with mud was destroyed on century IV A.C. by a “Super El Niño-Southern Oscillation” that caused alluviums.
Belief in life after death has motivated the construction of wonderful monuments, kings, pharaohs, emperors has sacrificed their people to achieve everlasting life. Maybe the most incredible is the Qin’s mausoleum, First Emperor of China, who ordered to build The Great Wall and Terracotta Army. Emperor Qin was obsessed with immortality for that reason to locate his tomb he chose Lishan mountain, rich in gold and jade, that in Chinese culture represents Yin and Yang respectively. The construction that took 40 years began around 246 B.C. and cost the life of many people consists of a principal tomb where the Emperor lies and three moats that together have more than 7000 soldiers made with terracotta and metals as gold, silver and bronze. The most amazing is that each figure has its own features, clothes, hairstyle, etc. In addition although pictures show uncolored soldiers everyone was painted, really a hard work.
If we hear Potala Palace probably won’t mean anything for us, but this is the maxim expression of Tibetan architecture and residence of Dalai Lamas. In Lasha, capital of Tibet, is in middle of the city the Hongashan mountain with 3700m of height, there in the top is located, since the VII century, the Palace which is made up by the White and Red Palace. It was built under instructions of the Tibetan King Sontsan Gampo because of the Wen Cheng princess’ arrival. Later the fifth Dalai Lama took possession of the Palace extending it to colossal dimensions to show the sacred and earthly power of Tibetan Buddhism.
Master Gérard was assigned to build the masterpiece of the Gothic architecture, then on 14th August, 1248 was started in Cologne, Germany, the construction of a Cathedral that wasn’t finished since 1880 because construction was stopped in 1510 and just was taken up again in 1817 when the original planes were found. It is home of the biggest bell that operates in the world called “Der Dicke Pitter” that means “The fat Peter” and also in the Cathedral is the sepulcher of the three Kings from the East.
If you add color, light, movement, music and aquatic acrobatics you will obtain a magic show, and you only will be able to watch something like that in the Font Màgica de Montjuïc. It was built, with other monuments, on the occasion of the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition by the architect and engineer Carles Buïgas I Sans, who presents the project just one year before, reason for why everybody thought that it couldn’t be finished at time, but more than 3000 workers were employed in the construction, thanks to this the Font could be finished in less than one year. The beautiful show that it affords makes to forget for a minute the turbulent and bloody history of Montjuïc since this mountain, with its Castle and Palace, has been witness of emblematic moments of Barcelona and Catalonia’s history.
Usually great monuments last a long time, since we put all our effort on it, so it’s normal that we don’t want that it won’t be damaged, but sometimes in spite of the effort result can be ephemeral, although it doesn’t mean that it’s not beautiful and that it doesn’t worth it. An excellent example of it is the IceHotel in Jukasjärvi, Sweden, near of Arctic Circle. Every year since 1990 the jury of the IceHotel Art&Design Group select proximally 40 artists and designers to build the hotel that only will exist between December and April. IceHotel just was the first now there is a lot of this kind of hotel in different parts of the world following the example of this work of art that was able to reinvent the traditional idea what is a holidays.
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