Legends -- Pyrenees; Pyrenees -- Description and travel; Pyrenees -- History
In the south of Languedoc a taste prevailed for churches comprising
huge naves without side aisles--in fact, immense halls. At Carcassonne
such is the type; but there, in the two churches in the New Town, the
effect is unsatisfactory, as the chancels, or apses, bud out of the
flat east wall in an ungainly manner. Here in Perpignan we have the
hall interior, but leading up to and ending in an apse of the full
width of the nave.
On the south side of the church is a chapel with a highly favoured
crucifix in it, and Pope Leo XIII accorded plenary indulgence with
remission of all sins to such as should worship before it and pray
for the extermination of heresies, i.e. heretics on the Feast of the
Exaltation of the Cross.
The other churches of S. Mathieu and La Réal deserve a visit. Built
on the same lines as the cathedral, they have been sadly spoiled by
tasteless additions in the Barroque period. Over the high altar at
La Réal, as in a side chapel at S. Mathieu, are groups of coloured
statuary, on which light is also made to fall from above; and as the
churches are profoundly dark, this is in its way effective.
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL INTERIOR, PERPIGNAN]
The ancient Palais de Justice, much purer in style than the Loge,
adjoins it, separated from it only by the old house of the consuls, now
the Hôtel de Ville. The old Palais has beautiful windows, with trefoil
heads cut in the block, unmoulded, supported by dainty columns. But
the most strikingly picturesque edifice of Perpignan is the Castelet,
erected between 1367 and 1369, with the town gate of Notre Dame (1481)
at one side of it, all constructed of tiles like the cathedral. The
bold projecting machicolations, and the octagonal turret surmounted by
a small cupola, have a pronounced Spanish character.
When one passes out of the Porte Notre Dame the Promenade des
Platanes is reached, a boulevard shaded by magnificent plane trees,
but all inclined from the north, from the terrible Tramontane wind,
which is the scourge of the plain of Roussillon. Here on Shrove Tuesday
evening hundreds of maskers dance under the leafless branches, and
sometimes in spite of the cutting wind and dropping rain. The promenade
is then railed in, and soldiers are stationed to act as sentinels to
prevent the crowd entering and interfering with the dancers. But the
waltz music is too exhilarating to allow these sentinels to soberly
pace their distances, and I have seen them holding their rifles and
pirouetting up and down their beats with them as if their firearms were
lovely partners.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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