Navigon MY GUIDE 3100 Car GPS Receiver | Teresa Farriols

My guide, Teresa Farriols, starts the exploration with a postcard­-panoramic view of the Nativity facade, seen across the park through blossoms and trees. Even at that distance, it looks more like a mutating fantasy than a Gothic cathedral. I make out four untraditional­ towers, their spires topped with bright-colored filial art that uses the sky as a canvas, and a large green cypress tree with white doves of peace and faithfulness. The closer we get, the more fantastic and fascinating it all appears.

The Nativity facade is the only side that was completely overseen by Gaudí before he died in 1926. It's his wildly imaginative and carefully crafted tribute to God through religion and nature. Two pillars stand tall between the doorways of Hope, Faith, and Charity, their stories told through scriptural sculptures. The seaward pillar rises from the stone back of a giant marine turtle, and the leeward pillar rests on an equal-size land tortoise.

This side of the building (the east side), which has been called the Bible in Stone, depicts the birth, childhood, and adolescence of Jesus in three-dimensional tableaus. Sometimes the fourth dimension of time shows through - the darker colors of age and smog, and the lighter, younger colors that show repairs from damage inflicted during the Spanish Civil War. Gaudí based the statues on people he selected from the neighborhood and his staff. He cast his forms in plaster, photographed them in front of multiple angled mirrors to get all perspectives, and wired skeletal bones in positions so the final carved stones would tell truths.

Among the biblical sculptures, I see morphing shapes that look like lava flows of leaves, flowers, trees, stalactites, and stalagmites. I am told there are 36 different kinds of birds in this facade, all found in the pages of the Bible, all modeled from real specimens. There are also the Milky Way, signs of the zodiac, and theologians.