Insider tour of the Sagrada Familia reveals 5 divine enigmas and hidden treasures

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — The Sagrada Familia basilica features sandcastle-like spires, stone carved to look like lush flora, a kaleidoscopic interior and a trove of treasures, some hiding in plain sight. Even regular worshippers at Barcelona’s world-famous landmark find themselves dumbstruck with wonder.

Josep Turull, the Catalan rector of the Sagrada Familia and the priest in charge of its parish activities, recently granted The Associated Press a private tour to show off his favorite gems ahead of Pope Leo XIV's highly anticipated Mass on Wednesday night.

“We say that one of the elements of the Sagrada Familia Basilica is that you never exhaust it,” Turull said. “I have spent the last eight years as its rector, and each day I discover something new.”

Each morning, Turull approaches the basilica's elaborately decorated façades. They are packed with an abundance of religious scenes and symbols, some easy to interpret for anyone with a basic understanding of Christianity, while others are mysterious and even shocking to see in a church.

The westward-looking Façade of the Passion is stark, its figures tormented, their bodies strained in angular poses. That was how architect Antoni Gaudí wanted it — “harsh and cruel, as if made of bones,” to show the pain and torment of Christ’s final days.

Decades after Gaudí's own death, sculptor Josep Subirachs tempered the façade's misery with some playful elements. There's Gaudí himself, above the central door, staring across at Jesus carrying his cross to Calvary. And what's that suduko-like numbered grid next to Judas kissing Jesus before his betrayal?

The “magic square” symbolizes the inevitability of Christ's death; adding the numbers in any direction always produces 33, Jesus's age at his crucifixion.

Another puzzle awaits the patient eye that drifts across to the scene of Peter denying Christ: a small, square-shaped labyrinth. Turull said that it alludes to the need to keep faith in God when we feel lost.

After celebrating Mass, Leo will step outside to offer a blessing for the Tower of Jesus Christ that made the Sagrada Familia the world’s tallest church when it was raised in October.

The basilica's heights are bursting with nature, from the rooster who crowed while Peter denied Christ to reptiles doing the job of gargoyles, and piles of fruit that crown its spires.

There are also flesh-and-blood beasts; a family of peregrine falcons nest in the tower dedicated to St. James, keeping away pigeons and, more importantly, their excrement.

Gaudí's masterpiece was chosen as one of the ideal spots to reintroduce the species, as it was one of the last locations in town where these birds nested before disappearing during the 1970s. The falcons have been breeding successfully at the basilica for over two decades.

Turull said that these lightning-fast birds of prey “recover the cycle of natural life.”

For the millions of annual visitors who admire the colored light filtering through the basilica's stained-glass windows, jostle for position to snap selfies and huddle around tour guides, it is easy to overlook what Turull calls its “spiritual heart." That requires going through a modest side entrance and descending a staircase.

Underground is a much smaller, more intimate chapel, where dozens of worshippers silently attend Mass and faith manages to keep sightseeing at bay.

Fittingly, it is here where Gaudí, a fervent Catholic, rests in a discreet tomb set inside a nook. He died exactly 100 years ago after being hit by a streetcar.

“People come to ask for his intercession,” Turull said, gesturing to the tomb interred in the floor. “That’s why there are so many candles. Because people place their trust in him. Many people have received favors for having prayed at the tomb of Gaudí.”

The Vatican is in the midst of a decades-long process that could eventually make Gaudí a saint. After Pope Francis named Gaudí “venerable” in 2025, the Vatican must now confirm a miracle attributed to his intercession for him to be beatified, then a second miracle for him to be canonized.

The basilica has proposed that the pope pray at Gaudí’s tomb during his visit, but whether he does remains to be seen.

Before ascending, Turull pauses at an enormous seashell — a real one, not made of stone — that serves as a basin for holy water. He said that Gaudí had the seashell from the Philippines set in wrought iron and fixed to the column.

“Gaudí always takes nature as an example,” Turull said, referencing the way the natural world inspired his designs and decorations.

Up a twisting staircase, a private room bathed in sunlight houses two freestanding oak cabinets laced with intricate ironwork. Designed by Gaudí, they hold the basilica’s most precious relics and most important clerical clothing. Among them is Pope Benedict XVI's chasuble — a cloak that clergy wear when celebrating Mass — from when he consecrated the Sagrada Familia in 2010.

This is where Pope Leo will change into a chasuble that is being sewn at a workshop just for this occasion.

Turull said the vestment will feature details symbolizing the day’s importance and a design related to the basilica's recently raised Cross of Jesus Christ. But he won't say anything more for now; some things need to stay secret.

AP videojournalist Hernán Muñoz contributed to this report.

A small square-shaped labyrinth is photographed at the Passion Façade at the basilica's Sagrada Família in Barcelona, Spain, Spain, May 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

A changing room where Pope Leo XIV will vest before presiding over Mass is seen at the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain, May 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Josep Maria Turull, rector of the Basilica of the Sagrada Familia, holds a cross-shaped relic beside cabinets containing some of the basilica's most precious relics and liturgical vestments in Barcelona, May 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

A detail of the Passion Façade shows the basilica's famous magic square at the Sagrada Família in Barcelona, Spain, May 15, 2026. Unlike a sudoku, every row, column and diagonal adds up to 33, symbolizing the age of Christ at his death.(AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Antoni Gaudí's tomb is photographed inside crypt of Gaudí beneath the Sagrada Família as crowds of visitors fill the basilica above in Barcelona, Spain, May 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

A priest celebrates Mass in the crypt of Antoni Gaudí beneath the Sagrada Familia while crowds of visitors fill the basilica above in Barcelona, Spain, May 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

BERLIN (AP) — Gunther von Hagens, the German anatomist who generated both fascination and revulsion around the globe with his “Body Worlds” exhibits of preserved human corpses, has died. He was 81.

Von Hagens' family and the Institute for Plastination, which he founded, said he died on Friday. A statement they issued on Monday gave no further details. Von Hagens had announced in 2010 that he was living with Parkinson’s disease.

Von Hagens trod a fine line between science, entertainment and commerce with his touring exhibits, as well as headline-grabbing actions such as a public autopsy.

At the heart of von Hagens’ work was the so-called plastination process — replacing body fluids with liquid plastic that then hardens. That technique, which he started developing in the 1970s, prevented decay, left tissues intact and allowed him to display preserved corpses and their inner organs.

The resulting exhibition, “Body Worlds,” first went on show in Japan in 1995.

Two years later, the collection of partly skinless corpses went on display in von Hagens’ homeland, overcoming an attempt by local church leaders to block its opening on the grounds that it was disrespectful. Von Hagens said he was helping viewers understand how their bodies work.

The anatomist “is forced in his daily work to reject the taboos and convictions that people have about death and the dead,” von Hagens said of his work.

“I touch here a taboo, which is our body, and nothing is so near as our body is to us,” he said.

The shows used the corpses of people who agreed to donate their bodies for plastination. Critics argued that von Hagens bordered on sensationalism with his works, which included a corpse riding a plastinated horse, and a pregnant woman with an eight-month-old fetus inside.

Von Hagens “plays with the corpses like a child plays with dolls,” the Rev. Ernst Pulsfort, spiritual rector of Berlin’s Catholic Academy, said when the show first opened in the German capital in 2001. He argued that it catered to a “public lust for sensation.”

During a “Body Worlds” show in London in 2002, the anatomist — wearing, as ever, his trademark black fedora — conducted Britain’s first public autopsy in 170 years before a sellout crowd of hundreds, defying government warnings that it might be illegal.

Von Hagens declared it a “huge success.” The British Medical Association’s head of ethics, Dr. Michael Wilkes, said it was “degrading and disrespectful.”

The “Body Worlds” exhibits were shown in several American cities after making their U.S. debut in Los Angeles in 2004.

Von Hagens' “Plastinarium,” where bodies are prepared, opened in the eastern German town of Guben in 2006.

The anatomist was born Gunther Liebchen on Jan. 10, 1945, in what is now western Poland.

He went to medical school in Jena in East Germany, but increasingly questioned the communist system and made a failed attempt to flee to the West. He was detained before West Germany bought his freedom in 1970, a regular practice at the time.

He continued his medical studies at the University of Luebeck and, in the 1970s, began working at Heidelberg University’s pathology and anatomy institute. He married a former classmate, Cornelia von Hagens, and took her surname.

His second wife, Angelina Whalley, heads his Heidelberg-based Institute for Plastination and curates his exhibitions, and he had three children from his first marriage.

Monday's statement said it was von Hagens' wish that his body be made available for plastination and “his family will respect and carry out this wish.”

FILE - Gunther von Hagen poses in front of the sculpture 'Rearing Horse with Rider' during the launch of Gunther von Hagens' Body Worlds museum in London, Thursday, Oct. 4, 2018. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein, file)

FILE - German Gunther von Hagens poses with a display from "Body Worlds" anatomy exhibit that puts real human specimens on show in Dallas, Texas, Jan. 23, 2007. (AP Photo/LM Otero, File)

FILE - Doctor Gunther von Hagens, anatomist, inventor of and creator of Body Worlds The Original Exhibitions of Real Human Bodies known as Germany's 'Dr Death' , is seen in front of one of his works in Istanbul, Turkey, Friday, June 11, 2010. (AP Photo/Ibrahim Usta, file)