Carcassonne, Basilica of Saints Nazarius and Celsus

In the last installment of my travelogue series, I promised to blog on the church in the medieval walled city of Carcassonne. I wanted to do that separately since I had enough material and pictures to warrant its own post.

The church goes by a few different names. Here is the sign posted outside its entrance declaring that it is the Basilique des Saints Nazaire et Celse.


The English language handout I acquired inside gives the name of the Basilica of Saints Nazarius and Celsus. Unfortunately they did not have anything detailing the stories of those saints, but I found a lengthy tale online from a Catholic forum. Another online source has Saint Nazarius as being an abbot during the time of Clotaire and is said to have "attacked the heathendom on the southern coast of France."

The handout suggests that the earliest church on that site was built during the 6th century during the "reign of Theodoric, regent for the Kingdom of the Wisigoths (sic)." It then states that the first written mention of this church was in 925 when Bishop Gimer was transfering the "Episcopal See from St. Mary and Savior's church in the surrounding country, to the church of St. Nazaire with the city walls."

The church has been renovated many times and it is said Pope Urban II stayed in Carcassonne for five days in June 1096 after having made his infamous call for the crusades in Clermont. While in Carcassonne, he blessed the materials that were used for the Romanesque building.

The plan called for a single nave, 2 side aisles, an apse with 3 chapels and the transept. The Romaneque nave adopts a disposition frequently observed in churches of the Bas-Languedoc: Barrel vaulting with doubled arches (nave), and barrel vaulting again for the especially narrow side aisles. The 2 side vaults act as buttresses for the central vault.

Here you can see the narrow barrel vaults on the side aisles.




The handout also points out that visitors should note the alternating round and squared columns.


The history of France, and particularly the south of France, is of a series of conquests. After the defeat of Carcassonne by Simon de Montfort, the king of France wanted this Romanesque church to be replaced with a Gothic one. However, the funds ran low and rather than tear down the entire structure, it was amended.

Here is my favorite picture as it shows the seams of where the pointed Gothic arches meet the rounded Romanesque arches.


Outside the church you can see that there are still remnants of it being a "work in progress." The scaffolding alone suggests that they are actively trying to restore aspects of the edifice.


But inside you do not get the sense of construction. It is a place of worship and quiet contemplation.


Here is a picture of the North facing rose window which dates from the 13th century.


Here is another shot at a slightly different angle showing off the architecture of the building more.
Here is the South facing rose window which dates to the 14th century.

More beautiful stained glass.


Then on the floor I saw this tombstone. The handout has several mentioned, and so I am unsure who this image is supposed to represent.





Here is a baptismal font in front of a statue of Jeanne d'Arc.


And a close up of the Maid of Orleans.




This church remained a cathedral until 1803 when the Episcopal See was transfered to St. Michael's church in the modern Carcassonne. Later Pope Leo XIII made St. Nazaire into a Lesser Basilica.

Next in my series will be the hilltop village of Puycelsi overlooking the vast Forêt de Grésigne.

Wednesday morning in Paris, Part II: coffee, churches, shin splints, Roman ruins and Rue Moufftard

Here is part II of my Wednesday morning in Paris series. You can find Part I here.

I had started writing that post on November 14th, but had not found time to finish it and was saved in my drafts box. I thought that once I published the post it would go to the top of my blog. Nope, it decided that the initial draft date is where it should be filed.

I also came up against a limit of picture space because it stopped uploading images, necessitating the posts to be serialized.

So here is Part II with no more further ado.

After leaving Saint Séverin, we walked to the outside of the Cluny and viewed the exterior to their famous Roman baths.

Next up was the church of Saint-Étienne du Mont where there is a reliquary that supposedly contains holy relics of Saint Genvieve, the patron saint of Paris. I say supposedly because the French revolution was not kind to anyone and holy relics were not immune to the frenzied actions of the mobs.

Here is the outside of that magnificent church.

Inside you can see the pointed Gothic arches,

the altar,



and the reliquary for Saint Genvieve.



During our walk we also passed by the Pantheon and the Sorbonne, but we did not stop in either. I wanted to see ruins.

One thing in particular that I wanted to see was any remnants from Philippe August's walls that surrounded Paris. Here you can see it on the right hand side wedged between two residential buildings.

Here is a side view, but you cannot get the true idea of its height. I believe 33 feet or so was the average height of the walls.

Here is the historical marker.

I will be using those walls in my story, even thought they are not historically accurate to the period. I have done a lot of mental wrestling with that aspect and came to the decision that my dramatic needs of the story have to be primary, and to only use the Roman walls would unnecessarily complicate my plot - therefore Philippe August's walls it shall be that protect Paris from the invading Saracen army.



From there we went to visit the ruins of the Roman arena. It had been buried for centuries and only recently when they were digging the area to build a parking lot was it uncovered. Needless to say, the parking lot lost out to an historical artifact.


You can see how the arena abuts modern residential buildings. It is amazing that it wasn't discovered before.

We took a few minutes out to just sit in the arena and watch children at play. I wonder how many of them realized that they were playing ball in an area where centuries before gladiators were engaged in blood sport.





It was at this point when we rested that I had to massage my legs. My shins, calves, and thighs ached. It was my third day of walking and I was afraid that I was developing shin splints. There was so much more that I needed to see and I simply could not afford to have my body give out on me. The momentary rest was definitely welcomed.

Here is where we sat.

Where the commoners would have sat during the Roman times. The nobles would have sat in the expensive seating which is shown here:

Yita told me that the acoustics are such that you can hear the conversations of people sitting in those boxes when you are in the "cheap seats." Today the arena is used in the summer time for theatrical productions and concerts. It is nice that Parisians can find some purpose to use such an historical landmark.

At this point we were nearing the end of our three hour walking tour and decided to walk to Rue Moufftard. Several of my friends had suggested we visit that famous street because of its atmosphere. I am glad we followed that advice.



While it is historic, Rue Moufftard has the feeling of a French village inside a large metropolitan city.

There was a farmers market that set up at lunch time and the weather was spectacular. The morning had been cool, but by noon it was warm and sunny. Gorgeous.



There is a mural on the side of one of the buildings that I felt was romantic. So yes, I can see why people fall in love with Paris.


At this point it was lunchtime and we were famished. The chocolat drenched pastry had evaporated and I needed more sustenance. As it turned out, Yita had a friend who owned a restaurant on Rue Moufftard and that is where we had lunch.

Oh, it was wonderful. We sat outside on the sidewalk with some shade from an umbrella, but otherwise there was sun to warm your soul. I had a salmon and leek quiche with salad and sparkling water. Scott had a similar lunch, but he chose to split a carafe of wine with Yita.

I did not dare drink wine at that time of the day for my normal propensity for taking an afternoon nap would become overwhelming and I could not take a nap that day. I had so much more to see.

Patricia, the owner of Salle de Manger, made sure that everything was perfect and she even bought the drinks for us since we were friends of Yita.

We had a lovely conversation over lunch and Yita said how much fun she had in planning our tour. She is multilingual, she speaks English, French, Dutch and Indonesian, so she has many different types of tour groups. Some simply want her to be a guide to the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe. While she does not mind taking people to see those monuments, she found it enjoyable to show off some of the more historical aspects of Paris that are not as sought out by tourists.

Here is a picture of our wonderful guide:



Then it was afternoon and we still had the Cluny and the Crypte Archaeologique to visit.

That will be another post for another day. I am exhausted just remembering how much walking we did that day.

Linda

Wednesday morning in Paris, Part I: coffee, churches, shin splints, Roman ruins and Rue Moufftard

Wednesday morning came and we needed coffee in a big way. We had a lot of ground to cover and we needed caffeine.

Scott did not want to drink espresso for his morning cup of coffee because he would rather slowly infuse himself to achieve his therapeutic range of caffeine rather than have it concentrated in a few swallows.

During our previous reconnaissance missions we spied a Starbucks a few blocks away north of Hôtel de Ville. I was feeling a little more confident in my French ordering skills and was able to not only get the sized coffee I wanted, but an incredibly rich breakfast item.

It looked like a piece of French toast, but I cannot remember its name.

The server asked me if I would like something on it. I forget all of the various options she mentioned, except for the one I chose: chocolat.

As I said chocalat in my best French accent we smiled at each other and any cultural differences between us disappeared. We were two women that shared a common love for chocolate.

Mmmm, it was rich. That pastry was warm and drenched in chocolate sauce.

Scott shook his head when he looked at my choice, and he stuck with a simple croissant. He missed out.

I knew that no matter how many calories or grams of fat in my breakfast that it would be worn off by the end of the morning. That's because we were going on a walking tour of Paris.

My friend Erika Mailman visited France last year and blogged about it as well. She recommended Paris Walks to me and said it was one of the best things that she did for herself while in Paris. I wanted to follow her suggestion, but I knew that scheduling might pose a problem.

Their Medieval themed walks only take place on Mondays, when we were enveloped in a sea of humanity known as Charles De Gaulle International Airport. It would have been impossible for me to even fantasize that we could make it to Paris in time to be a part of that tour group. Knowing that reality, I had to either find another similar group tour or hire a private guide.

I thought the price for Paris Walks' private tours to be ghastly expensive at 160 Euros for two hours and 210 Euros for three hours.

We also missed by about two weeks being able to get in on one of Leonard Pitt's walking tour. He wrote the fabulous book Walks through Lost Paris.

I spent several days Googling the subject and trying to weigh my options. The best I found was Paris Walkabout whose price for a three hour guided tour was 135 Euros.

I worked with Tom Hillyard to devise a tour based on my own particular needs.

Yita Hillyard was our guide and she did a wonderful job.

She met us at 9 a.m. outside the main entrance of Hôtel Dieu and we began our walk starting with the ancient streets on the Isle de la Cité. We were shown artifacts of Medieval Paris that had not been destroyed by Baron Haussman's wrecking balls.

We saw the narrow streets where the houses were not kept in straight parallel lines to one another. In fact some of them became quite narrow, making it difficult in today's world for any motorized vehicles to travel down them.


She also showed us courtyards which centuries ago had doorways for horses. They now appear to be garages, but many years ago the horse power contained was of the distinct equine variety.

Here are two examples and you can see that the doorways to the houses themselves have undergone different treatment as well. One is bricked up while the other still appears to be in use.

We then walked to the Left Bank and entered one of the oldest churches in Paris: Saint Julien-Le-Pauvre. Here is a nice online source of the history of the church which was first recorded by Gregory of Tours in his History of the Franks dating back to the sixth century. The current building only dates back to the twelfth century and has undergone many renovations and is now a Greek Orthodox church.



With the sudden immersion in all things French, my husband had a momentary lapse which I thought comical. He wanted to know why a saint would be named after pepper. I knew that pauvre meant poor, but I then drew a mental blank for the French word for pepper.

Yita helped us out and said, "poivre." Thank goodness she was not offended.

I do think that Saint Julien of the poor is a much better name than Saint Julien of the pepper.

On the inside you can see the pointed Gothic arches and Greek influence.


On the outside you can see remnants of past architectural designs, particularly in the partial blocking of a portion of a window.

I learned to look for that in the many churches we visited during our trip to France. There are also vestiges of a wall and columns on the second story that were not completely removed.


We then went to nearby Saint Severin which was built at a later period and has the flamboyant
Gothic look. The church was one of the few churches we came across that was closed to visitors and so we did not go inside.


It also had gargoyles gracing its side.


We also came across a really narrow alleyway. I get claustrophobia just looking at it.


I can see how fires from one building would easily spread to another when only a skinny cat could walk down that alley without difficulty.

There is so much more to share about the walking tour, but I think I may have come up against Blogger's maximum allowable pictures per post, so I shall have to make this Part I and continue this later.