English
The church of Santa María del Mar is a Gothic style church. Inside you can see highlighted all the elements of this movement, such as the tall, spiraled columns and the great hidden arches, or the disuse of different surfaces to leave them “blank”.
This style (especially for its columns and its height) was what inspired Gaudí in his works: buildings that became popular worldwide for their strangeness first and for their creativity second.
The church was founded to commemorate the Catalan conquest of Sardinia and because the people of the area, Barri de la Rivera, grew at a very fast rhythm and there wasn´t any more space for them in the district´s parish. That´s why they chose the name “Santa María del Mar”, to represent the naval triumph over the terrestrial one.
It has three façades and one very different to the other. The main one, for example, is decorated with giant sculptures of St Peter and St Paul. On the other hand, the workers that contributed to the construction of the church of Santa María del Mar are also represented on its doors, so that they nor the work that they did can ever be forgotten.
The interior decoration of the great church can´t be appreciated fully today because, in 1936, it caught fire for political and religious reasons.
But that´s not an inconvenient to visit it, the opposite, because it enhances the simplicity of the Catalan Gothic style and it allows one to submerge himself in art and architecture.
That´s why, if you want to see the church of Santa María del Mar, you have to rent some comfortable apartments in Barcelona and start to enjoy.
