Sagrada Família Trivia
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59 free Sagrada Família trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Sagrada Família took 144 years to reach the top of its central tower, outlived its architect by a century and was called both 'spirit symbolised in stone' and 'one of the most hideous buildings in the world'. This quiz covers the whole story: the bookseller who dreamed it up, Villar's abandoned Gothic plan, Gaudí's takeover in 1883, the tram that killed him, the anarchists who burned his models, and the popes who consecrated the basilica in 2010 and blessed the finished Tower of Jesus Christ in 2026. You will also be asked about the Nativity, Passion and Glory façades, the eighteen planned spires and their symbols, the 33-sum magic square, the tree-like columns, the organ, the English quarry that now supplies the stone, the high-speed rail tunnel underneath, and Gaudí's own life from Reus to God's Architect. Easy questions suit anyone who has stood in the queue; the expert tier asks for sculptors, chief architects and vault heights. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the basilica and on Antoni Gaudí, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. If you like this, try our quizzes on Barcelona and on famous cathedrals.
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Q 01Barcelona, home of the Sagrada Família, is the capital of which Spanish region?
Catalonia
Catalonia. For all its size, the region's most famous church has never been its capital's cathedral: that title belongs to a medieval building in the heart of the old city.
Q 02Gaudí was the leading architect of Modernisme, Barcelona's own version of which international style?
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau, with its long, sinuous, plant-like lines, was known in Spain as Modernisme. Gaudí pushed it further than anyone, until the structure of a building and its ornament became one and the same thing.
Q 03Before Gaudí took over in 1883, the Sagrada Família was begun to a conventional design in which style?
Gothic Revival
Gothic Revival was the plan of the first architect, Francisco de Paula del Villar, pointed bell tower and all. He quit after a year in a row over the cost of solid stone pillars, and the job went to a 31-year-old Gaudí.
Q 04Construction of the Sagrada Família began on 19 March 1882, the feast day of which saint?
St Joseph
St Joseph was the patron of the lay association that commissioned the church, so its first architect picked the saint's feast day for the first stone. The first chapel to open, in 1885, was dedicated to him too.
Q 05José María Bocabella, who conceived the Sagrada Família and promoted it in his own devotional magazine, made his living as what?
A bookseller
A bookseller: Bocabella came home from a pilgrimage to Rome and the shrine of the Holy House at Loreto dreaming of an exact copy for his own city, until his first architect talked him out of it.
Q 06The Sagrada Família was conceived as an 'expiatory temple', meaning it would be funded how?
Entirely by donations
Entirely by donations: the faithful gave to atone for sins, so the pace of building rose and fell with the collections. Today visitors' ticket money does most of the paying.
Q 07Asked why the Sagrada Família was taking so long, Gaudí reportedly replied that whom was 'not in a hurry'?
My client
'My client is not in a hurry' was Gaudí's reported answer, and the client he meant was God. He knew he would never live to see the church finished.
Q 08Gaudí's disciple Domènec Sugrañes kept building the Sagrada Família after 1926 until which event stopped the work?
The Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War stopped the work in 1936. Gaudí's drawings were burned and his plaster models smashed, and it took his successors years to piece the fragments back together.
Q 09What was Gaudí struck by on 7 June 1926, in the accident that led to his death?
A tram
A tram struck Gaudí as he crossed the Gran Via on his daily walk to the church of Sant Felip Neri. He died three days later, and crowds turned out for a funeral procession that ended at the Sagrada Família.
Q 10Why did the unconscious Gaudí fail to receive immediate aid after his accident?
He was assumed to be a beggar
He was assumed to be a beggar: Gaudí went about in worn-out suits. Unrecognised, he was taken to the old Santa Creu hospital rather than the city's modern one, and he died there three days later.
Q 11Where in the Sagrada Família is Gaudí buried?
The crypt
The crypt, where Gaudí lies in the chapel of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, is the one part of the church begun to another architect's plan. He inherited it half-built when he took over in 1883.
Q 12Who broke into the Sagrada Família workshop and destroyed many of Gaudí's plans and models in July 1936?
Anarchists
Anarchists sacked the workshop in the upheaval of July 1936. Gaudí had worked from plaster models more than from drawings, and the smashed pieces were later reassembled to guide his successors.
Q 13Often mistaken for a cathedral, the Sagrada Família was given which rank by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010?
Minor basilica
Q 21The Sagrada Família's Nativity façade, the only one begun in Gaudí's lifetime, faces which direction?
Northeast
Northeast, so the façade catches the morning sun. The orientation was not Gaudí's choice: he would have turned the whole church to point its apse at the sunrise, but the foundations were already laid when he arrived.
Q 22The harsh straight lines of the Sagrada Família's Passion façade are carved to resemble what?
The bones of a skeleton
The bones of a skeleton: Gaudí wanted this façade hard and bare, as if made of bones. He conceived it in 1911 while convalescing in the Pyrenees, so ill that he drew up his will.
Q 23Which sculptor's gaunt, controversial figures decorate the Passion façade of the Sagrada Família?
Minor basilica: Benedict XVI consecrated the church on 7 November 2010, once its nave had finally been roofed over and Mass could be said inside. The title of cathedral stays with a medieval church across town.
Q 14Which pope came to Barcelona to bless the Sagrada Família's newly completed central tower?
Leo XIV
Leo XIV blessed the tower on 10 June 2026, a hundred years to the day after Gaudí died, and it was lit up for the first time once the Mass was over.
Q 15The Sagrada Família's tallest tower, completed in 2026, is dedicated to whom?
Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ. Its builders scheduled the 172.5-metre tower for 2026 so that it would be finished a hundred years after Gaudí's death.
Q 16Which building did the Sagrada Família overtake in 2025 to become the world's tallest church?
Ulm Minster
Ulm Minster in Germany had been the tallest church since its spire was finished in 1890. It lost the title when one piece of a cross was hoisted up, lifting the Sagrada Família to 162.91 metres against Ulm's 161.5.
Q 17Gaudí wanted the Sagrada Família to stay just lower than which hill?
Montjuïc
Montjuïc stood for God's handiwork, which Gaudí felt no human work should outdo. The final height was fixed at 172.5 metres, safely under the hill's summit.
Q 18Twelve of the Sagrada Família's eighteen spires stand for which group?
The apostles
The apostles get twelve bell towers, four to each façade. Judas is left out, and because Matthew and John have taller towers as evangelists, Paul, Barnabas and Matthias fill the empty places.
Q 19At the Sagrada Família, the spire of Saint Luke is topped by which of the Evangelists' traditional symbols?
A winged bull
A winged bull is Luke's emblem. The Evangelists' symbols come from the winged creatures in Ezekiel's vision and the Book of Revelation, which early writers such as St Jerome matched to the Gospel authors.
Q 20What was hoisted onto the Sagrada Família's tower of the Virgin Mary in November 2021 as its crowning piece?
A twelve-pointed star
A twelve-pointed star, seven metres across and illuminated at night. It was switched on for the first time on 8 December 2021, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, after a Mass to bless Mary's tower.
Josep Maria Subirachs
Josep Maria Subirachs gave more than twenty years to the façade and made no concessions to Gaudí's flowing style, which is why his hard-edged figures have been argued over ever since.
Q 24Which Japanese sculptor rebuilt statues on the Sagrada Família's Nativity façade that were destroyed in the 1930s?
Etsuro Sotoo
Etsuro Sotoo has worked at the church since 1978, beginning with those broken statues. Following so closely in Gaudí's footsteps led him to convert to Catholicism.
Q 25Which Sagrada Família façade, still unfinished in 2026, will be the main entrance?
The Glory façade
The Glory façade faces south and in 2026 was still a decade from completion. It needs a grand stairway across the street, a plan that would mean rehousing at least a thousand neighbours, who have fought it for years.
Q 26The Sagrada Família's magic square adds up to 33, marking what?
Christ's age at death
Christ's age at death, by tradition. The sculptor borrowed the square from Dürer's engraving Melencolia I, where every line makes 34, and repeated two numbers to bring the total down to 33.
Q 27Which animals carry the two great columns of the Sagrada Família's Nativity façade?
A turtle and a tortoise
A turtle and a tortoise, one for the sea and one for the land, bear the columns as symbols of what never changes. Gaudí answered them with chameleons at the edges of the façade, standing for change.
Q 28The three portals of the Sagrada Família's Nativity façade each stand for one of which trio?
The theological virtues
The theological virtues: Hope on the left, Charity in the centre, Faith on the right. Gaudí meant every figure on them to be painted in lifelike colour, so the bare stone seen today is only half his plan.
Q 29Which prayer fills the Sagrada Família's main bronze doors, with one line repeated in fifty languages?
The Our Father
The Our Father covers the doors in raised lettering, with 'Give us this day our daily bread' in fifty languages. The handles are an A and a G, Gaudí's initials, picked out of the line about temptation.
Q 30What shape is the floor plan of the Sagrada Família?
A Latin cross
A Latin cross with five aisles. The first architect had drawn the same shape with only three, and Gaudí enlarged the whole scheme within weeks of taking the job.