Sacred grove

The Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, its nave completed since my first visit 22 years ago, conveys the excitement the first gothic cathedrals must have evoked when they were built: structures so tall and light-filled that the only analog was not other work of human hands but a forest. (I note with satisfaction also that Gaudí's treelike columns look pollarded!) If you resist the symmetry, the skylight-spangled ceiling's forest-like too!