Post by Miguel Bronchud

Barcelona gains a new Gaudí museum. With more than one secret. The Teresianes (school) on Ganduxer Street in the upper part of Barcelona (Sarrià/Sant Gervasi) will open to the public for the first time in 2028 as the “Museu Gaudí Teresianes”, a new cultural center that aspires to become an international benchmark for the architect's work. The Convent, was commissioned by Enric d’Ossó, founder of the Company of the mystical Santa Teresa de Jesus, and was built in record time (between 1888 and 1890), despite the fact that the patron lacked sufficient resources and was able to complete it thanks to public fundraising. The new facility, once fully developed by IngeniaCultura, will occupy the first three floors of the building (approximately 3,000 square meters), and its conversion will require an investment of between 6 and 7 million euros. “With the exception of the Sagrada Família, which he didn't finish, the Teresianes is the only Gaudí building that still serves the same purpose for which it was created,” adds Duarte, who already has an architectural project by Genís Planelles but waited to announce the new museum until he had the Vatican's approval. As a curiosity, the “logo” of the Convent drawn by Antoni Gaudi (visible from the outside in a corner) is essentially a “Double Helix”, see picture, one century before the discovery in Cambridge of the structure of DNA at the old MRC building. Good luck to the project announced today with occasion of the visit by Pope Leo XIV to the city of Barcelona, the day before his inauguration of the Cross by Gaudi on the highest point of the Sagrada Família. When the Catalan architect built the convent another genius had just discovered “the gene”, without knowing anything about chromosomes or DNA: Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) was an Augustinian monk and naturalist born in the former Austrian Empire (now the Czech Republic). He is universally known as the "Father of Genetics" for discovering the basic laws of inheritance through his meticulous experiments with pea plants, introducing mathematics and statistics to the study. Pope Leo XIV (born Robert Francis Prevost) is the 267th head of the Catholic Church and the first pope from the United States of America. Elected on May 8, 2025, the Chicago-born was in fact an Augustinian friar and previously spent decades doing missionary work in Peru. Mendel is an extraordinary example of how Catholic Church and Science are not necessarily incompatible. In present times when Science appears to be questioned, or misunderstood, let us celebrate these strange coincidences. #Gaudi #Mendel #LeoXIV #Science #Religion