The Road Goes Ever On

Two Loose In Toulouse, 3: Our Lady of the Bull; And Dinner

Another church and the end of our day, loose in Toulouse...

We wandered back through the University area...

But stopped to take a look at Our Lady of the Bull
church; Saint Sernin was the first bishop of Toulouse
(sent by Pope Fabian; or was it Pope Elvis?); refused
to acknowledge the pagan gods and was martyred
by being tied to a bull and dragged around town
(Christian version of the Dirce myth?); the church
stands on the site of his burial; bones and relics now
in the basilica

Nice 13th century Gothic

The painting tells the story...

Lots of paint in this old church

We'd thought of visiting the Jacobins church we saw in
2013, but it was already closed; so we proceeded on in
the direction of the Capitolium

Stopping briefly at the 16th century donjon du capitale
there

Now the city tourism office

Admiring the architecture

Wondering about some of the residents

And ending up at a nice resto at Place Saint-Georges

My meat board...some of it game, I think

Plus a side of pate..

Her steak; the frites were victims of the cooking oil shortage in
France

Skinny, skimpily-clad, numbered people running past us as we
made our way to the Metro and our hotel

Two Loose In Toulouse, 2: Basilica of St. Sernin

From the Capitolium area Google Maps guided us to the Basilica of St. Sernin, a church we had visited in 2013, but were not so taken with: not Gothic. Since 2013, we have come to find Romanesque churches to be of considerable interest...their greater age than Gothics, the lack of light good for contemplation, thick walls good for defense (times were tough), far greater likelihood of seeing the goofy, occasionally obscene Medieval sculpture I favor, and so on. St. Sernin did not disappoint, except in the obscene sculpture department.

The tower rises from the crossing, is Romanesque
until the 4th tier, then, with the spire, Gothic; nobody's
perfect

Helpful illustration: cruciform, extraordinary size, perhaps
only the abbey church at Cluny (now gone) was larger;
combination stone and red brick from the east, became more
brick than stone as construction proceeded to the west...

West portal tympanum: Ascension; we'll come back to the sculpture
later

Nave view: Romanesque indeed

Elevation; not a pointy thing in sight

As with so many of the Romanesque churches we've seen (Autun,
Vezelay, etc.), the sculptural program, especially the capitals,
always impresses and confounds: here, the Holy Goats, framed
by depictions of the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch

Seriously, the interior of this church is fairly
overwhelming, especially in its age

The altar consecrated in 1096 by Pope Urban II;
Himself

Not sure when the Holy Cabana was consecrated

Always stern-looking Mandorla pose

Overwhelming view up into the crossing area

Huge old frescoes all around

Ceiling fresco, Mystic Lamb, Byzantine-looking
to us

Cain bonking Abel? Lots of Biblical figures bonked
each other

Among the organs

Helpful chronology

It's pretty much always been a Camino church

Longer term resident peregrino

Now for some of the exterior sculpture, again, mostly
capitals...Massacre of the Innocents

King David playin'

Shepherds killing lions

Hand-holding Expulsion; male angel showing
solidarity with Adam?

Two Loose In Toulouse, 1: Cathedral of St. Etienne

We visited Toulouse briefly in 2013, taking the train from a campground in Grimont in for a day. We liked the place and were satisfied we had "done" France's sixth largest city. On our 2022 Dordogne campaign we actually hadn't planned on driving as far south as Toulouse, but Marriott's "use it or lose it" approach to loyalty points, and the paucity of their hotels in France, took us back to Toulouse again for a couple nights, June 30th and July 1st. We're glad it worked out this way, since we much enjoyed our brief visit to the old city, revisiting a few places, appreciating them much more thoroughly this time, and also seeing more that was new to us.

Our hotel was out by the airport, so we took first a bus and then the Metro to get into the central city. We started off just ambling along the apparent main drag, then decided to see the cathedral--which we'd not seen in 2013--and then, disappointed with it, decided to cross the old town and see the Romanesque St. Sernin church we'd visited in 2013, back when we were only impressed by Gothics. This time, St. Sernin was a knock-out, largest and greatest of all Romanesque churches still standing. And then we just ambled around more a bit in the university and Capitolium areas, knocking off yet another church, St. Mary of the Bull (I swear I am not making this up), before settling into dinner at a restaurant on a beautiful square, replete with a lively Friday evening crowd. It was a good but somewhat loose and disorganized day, as this and the following posts will reflect.

Since our hotel was out by the airport, I did wander over to what
Toulouse is nowadays best known for...Airbus, and the French/
European aerospace industry...one of the best flights ever, for me,
was an Airbus 380 from Dubai to Barcelona in 2017

Much interesting architecture in Toulouse

Reminiscent of Paris in some respects, except the red Toulouse
brick, sometimes in bands, sometimes not

Approaching the cathedral St. Etienne...the weirdness already
apparent from the north side (Google photo)

You enter at what might be the north transept

In the south of France they did not get the memo
about flying buttresses; these are grounded, integral,
that is to say

Chancel, Gothic, 13th century or so, the newer part of the church,
with one of the longest choirs we have seen

Elevation in the choir

Flying organ; 19th century

In the huge choir, nice carving

Helpful plan of the church, where you begin to
understand its weirdness: note that the nave is
relatively small, and seriously off-set from the
chancel and choir

Many nice chapels radiating out in the chancel; here,
St. Vinnie

And here the ever popular St. James, festooned
with shells...

Now at the rear of the choir, looking into the (off-set) nave

Three bays, 12th century Romanesque

The west rose window, so close in design and theme to Notre
Dame de Paris' west window, both done within a few years of
each other...originally 1230, but none of the glass is original

Looking from the nave's west portal into the church;
though some might be tempted to architectural
shaming, it's really a matter of grand Gothic designs,
interrupted by plagues, financial reverses, reformations,
revolutions, and wars...the old Romanesque nave was to
be torn down and a new nave to be built to match (and
fit) the choir and chancel, centuries ago...but, well,
sic transit, Gloria