20 Famous Churches That Took Centuries To Finish

Antoni Gaudí took over Barcelona’s Sagrada Família basilica in 1883, one year after architect Francisco de Paula del Villar had begun work on the project. When he was killed by a tram in 1926, less than 25% of it had been completed. In 1936, anarchists burned Gaudí’s workshop during the Spanish Civil War, which destroyed many of his drawings and plaster models. Despite remaining unfinished, Pope Benedict XVI consecrated the church in 2010.

The cornerstone of Notre-Dame de Paris was laid by Bishop Maurice de Sully in 1163. The primary construction of the great Gothic cathedral was completed in 1345, some 182 years after its inception. The spire that burned down in April 2019 wasn’t part of this original cathedral; it was added during a Gothic Revival renovation by architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc from 1844 to 1864.

Architect Arnolfo di Cambio got construction of Florence’s cathedral underway in 1296. But for more than 100 years, builders left the 140-foot-wide hole in the roof open. No one knew how to build a dome that wide without wooden scaffolding. In 1418, architect Filippo Brunelleschi won a competition to build the dome. He built a self-supporting, double-shelled dome between 1420 and 1436, keeping his methods secret. Even the marble facade came later, added in 1887.

In 1248, Archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden laid the foundation stone of Cologne Cathedral to hold the supposed remains of the three biblical Magi. Funds were exhausted, and the Reformation altered cultural priorities. Work stopped around 1560. For nearly 300 years, an unadorned tower, capped with a huge wooden crane, rose over the city. Construction resumed in 1842 and ended in 1880, 632 years after the first stone was laid. Active building, however, took place across only about 350 of those years. The rest was lost to the long hiatus.

In 1505, Pope Julius II decreed that the dilapidated 4th-century Old St. Peter’s Basilica be demolished, with architect Donato Bramante breaking ground a year later. Many chief architects came and went, including Raphael, Antonio da Sangallo, and eventually Michelangelo, who assumed the role in 1547 and reimagined the dome. The nave and facade were added by architect Carlo Maderno. In 1626, 120 years after the initial groundbreaking, Pope Urban VIII consecrated the completed basilica.

The first stone of St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague was laid by King John of Luxembourg and Emperor Charles IV in 1344. The cathedral was designed by architects Matthias of Arras and then Peter Parler. Construction stopped during the Hussite Wars, a religious struggle about church reform in Bohemia that began in 1419. The nave remained unfinished until a patriotic group formed to complete the cathedral took up the project in 1873, roughly 450 years later, eventually finishing the facade and spires. The building was consecrated on September 28, 1929.

In 1072, Bishop Remigius de Fécamp, under orders from William the Conqueror, started work on Lincoln Cathedral. An earthquake severely damaged the Norman building in 1185, and work on a Gothic replacement was started by Saint Hugh of Lincoln in 1192. The wooden spire, completed in 1311, stood at approximately 160 meters, said to be the tallest building on earth, higher than the Great Pyramid of Giza. However, the spire collapsed in a storm in 1548 and has not been replaced.

Karnak was built by Senusret I around 1970 BC and developed over millennia as pharaohs such as Hatshepsut, Thutmose III, Seti I, and Ramesses II added to it during the New Kingdom, continuing until the Ptolemies around 30 BC. In a period of almost two millennia, numerous pylons, sanctuaries, and annexes, including the Great Hypostyle Hall with its 134 columns, were constructed. This expansion was in part driven by the need for each successive ruler to demonstrate his legitimacy. There was no overall master plan for the entire complex.

In 1401, the Seville cathedral chapter pledged to construct a church so magnificent that people of later generations would consider them mad. Seville’s cathedral was built over a 12th-century mosque erected by the Almohads, an Islamic dynasty. It still incorporates the mosque’s minaret, known as the Giralda, as well as the prayer hall’s courtyard. The cathedral’s main crossing vault was completed in 1506 but fell down in 1511. Architect Juan Gil de Hontañón replaced it by 1519. The Giralda itself was built for practicality: muezzins rode horses up its 35 interior ramps.

In 1386, Duke Gian Galeazzo Visconti started work on Milan’s cathedral and established a building authority called the Veneranda Fabbrica, which had tax-free access to marble quarries. More than 70 architects worked on the cathedral over almost six centuries. Napoleon Bonaparte ordered that the facade be completed by 1805 so he could be crowned King of Italy there, but French money was slow in arriving and unreliable, so Milan footed the bill for most of the construction. The last of the bronze doors was not put in place until 1965.

Duke Rudolf IV began St. Stephen’s Cathedral’s Gothic expansion in Vienna in the 14th century, and the South Tower was finished in 1433. In 1450, builders began work on a similar North Tower but stopped in 1511 to put the money toward building the city walls in anticipation of an Ottoman attack. Builders topped off the tower with a Renaissance dome in 1578. Wartime fire burned the roof in 1945, and the present multicolored tiled roof was reconstructed between 1948 and 1952.

The people of Ulm paid for the building of a parish church within the city walls in 1377. In 1543, work on the steeple was halted at 100 meters due to the Reformation and concerns about the building’s stability. Work on the steeple kicked off again in 1844 thanks to Gothic Revival enthusiasm, and it was finally finished in 1890 at 161.53 meters. It is the tallest church steeple in the world.

In 1220, Archbishop Walter de Gray ordered the older Norman cathedral at York to be pulled down and replaced with a new structure that would be even larger than Canterbury’s. Over the course of 252 years, it was constructed in three phases, specifically Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular Gothic, and then reconsecrated in 1472. Its pale gray stone, which is actually magnesian limestone quarried at nearby Tadcaster rather than granite, gives York Minster its distinctive color.

The city council, rather than the church, laid the first stone for the Gothic Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna in 1390. In 1514, the architect Arduino degli Arriguzzi suggested enlarging the basilica, a project that would surpass even St. Peter’s in Rome. In the 1560s, Pope Pius IV diverted the land set aside for the basilica’s planned enlargement, along with the money meant for it, toward a university building. The move is traditionally attributed to papal jealousy, but was more likely a result of city planning. The upper part of the facade is unfinished, and the bricks are left bare.

The cathedral of Santiago de Compostela was begun by King Alfonso VI and Bishop Diego Peláez in 1075 to enshrine the supposed remains of the apostle Saint James the Great. Master Mateo’s Romanesque Pórtico da Gloria prompted the church’s consecration in 1211, but the famed Baroque frontage of the cathedral, the Obradoiro facade, didn’t appear until 1738 to 1750, when architect Fernando de Casas Novoa constructed it to protect the older medieval portal.

Peisistratos, the Athenian tyrant, initiated construction on the temple of Olympian Zeus ca. 515 BC, but the project ceased when he and his sons were overthrown. Later, the Hellenistic king Antiochus IV Epiphanes commenced work on the temple in 174 BC, utilizing Corinthian columns. The project ended again following Antiochus’ death. Finally, Roman Emperor Hadrian completed the massive 104-column temple in about 131 AD, dedicating it some 640 years after breaking ground. One column was toppled by a storm in 1852 and still remains at the site.

In 1245, King Henry III demolished the Romanesque choir that King Edward the Confessor had built in the 11th century at Westminster Abbey and replaced it with a French-influenced coronation church. The rebuilding continued into the 14th and 15th centuries, and in the early 1500s King Henry VII added his Perpendicular Gothic Lady Chapel. The architect for the two western towers was Nicholas Hawksmoor, who died in 1736, and his successor, John James, did not finish the towers until 1745, nine years later.

Construction began on Strasbourg Cathedral’s Romanesque foundations in 1015 by Bishop Werner von Habsburg. It was rebuilt in the High Gothic style between the 12th and 14th centuries by master builder Erwin von Steinbach. An octagonal north spire 142 meters high, designed by master builder Johannes Hültz, was completed in 1439. Funds were exhausted before construction of a matching south tower could begin, and the cathedral remains asymmetrical today. It was the world’s tallest building from 1647 to 1874.

The first stone structures of the Meenakshi Amman Temple were constructed by the Pandya dynasty from about 1190 to 1205 CE. It was sacked and looted in 1310 by Delhi Sultanate general Malik Kafur. The Nayak dynasty rebuilt it from 1559 to 1659, and King Thirumalai Nayak added the thousand-pillar hall and the gateways known as gopurams. The painted figures covering the gopurams are not ancient; they are repainted every 12 years in the reconsecration ceremony, called Kumbhabhishekam.

The builders laid the cornerstone for New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine in 1892. The diocese switched architects in 1909, altering the design from Byzantine-Romanesque to French Gothic Revival. In the same year, engineer Rafael Guastavino put up a tiled dome over the crossing as a temporary stopgap. War and lack of funds kept it in place, and it remains in place now, more than a century later. However, the spires and transepts were never built.

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