Postări

Se afișează postări din aprilie, 2014

Street festivities

Imagine
A number of events took place whilst we were in Toulouse. The military parade and the  street carnival ended a day that can hardly be categorized as usual. It was just our luck that the street carnival had been postponed one week because of bad weather and so we were in the right place at the right time. The military parade was a wonderful exhibition of traditional military garments and weaponry of not only French troops, but Spanish, Catalan, Italian and British as well. The carnival was your "ordinary" street manifestation, filled with vivid and creative costumes, loud and colorful floats and people from all over united under the banners of diversity and joy.

Cathédrale Saint Etienne, Toulouse

Imagine
The Saint Etienne Cathedral in Toulouse is a unique testimony of a building effort that spanned for more than 6 centuries.  Its construction debut is rather unclear but the general agreement places it in the 13th century. It is by the wishes of the newly elected bishop Bertrand de l'Isle-Jourdain that a new church should be built, that would rival the  grand Parisian cathedrals.  The architect that will accept this great endeavor is Jean Deschamps, the same architect that planned the Cathedrale of Narbonne and also worked on the Cathedrales de Clermant-Ferrand, Limoges and Rodez. As a result of such a long construction process, and due to a fire that halted the construction progress in 1609, a dihotomic  appearance is preserved both on the exterior and the interior. The main entrance is through the wide nave called Raymondine (the oldest part of the cathedral) which has a romanesque influence, while the second part consists of a long and vast choir, built in a northern gothic