How do you build an unbuildable tower?

Caroline, have you ever been to Sagrada Família?

No, I haven't.

Now I really, really want to go.

Have you?

I went there last year when they were just completing this.

It, it is absolutely extraordinary.

My favorite anecdote from all of this to, to show Gaudi's attention to detail and, and maybe sort of divinely inspired madness.

[chuckles]

He, um, he wants to get everything right, and on the Nativity Frieze, which was the first sort of external piece of decoration that he built, he, he wanted to show the donkey, Jesus' donkey, or, or well, Joseph's donkey.

Jesus wasn't around yet.

So he went round Barcelona to find the most emaciated donkey he could.

Oh.

And this donkey was already presumably having a bad day.

He then chloroformed the donkey, and he raised it on a crane so that he could take a plaster cast of it in situ a- and, and produce this sort of most realistic donkey.

And you can look at this poor donkey.

Um, the donkey survived, I believe.

I was about to say, did this poor donkey live to tell the tale?

It, it did, along with some of his friends.

Some of his friends were sort of the Roman guards.

[chuckles]

They, they, they were-- I don't think he chloroformed his friends.

I think he just got them to stand still.

But, um, it, it, it's quite something, and it def- definitely-

Wow

... changes how you look at it.