Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1Rose, Elise Whitlock
Religion
Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1
Rose, Elise Whitlock
Cathedrals -- France; France -- Description and travel
Both in history and its monumental Roman ruins, the capital of this
province, Orange, is one of the richest cities of the Southland, but its
Cathedral is very poor and mean. The plan is one of the simplest of the
Provencal conceptions, a "hall basilica," archaeologically interesting,
but in its present state of patch and repair, architecturally
commonplace and unbeautiful. In spite of Protestant attacks and Catholic
restorations, the XI century type has been maintained, a rectangle whose
plain double arches support a tunnel vault and divide the interior into
four bays. The piers are heavy and severe; and between them are alcoves,
used as chapels. The choir, narrower than the nave, is preceded by the
usual dome, and beyond it is a little unused apse, concealed from the
rest of the interior by a wall. Unimportant windows built with
distinctly utilitarian purpose successfully light this small, simple
room, and no kindly shadow hides its bareness or diminishes the unhappy
effect of the paintings which disfigure the walls. The Cathedral's
exterior is so surrounded by irregular old houses that the traveller had
discovered it with some difficulty. It has little that is worthy of
description, and after having entered by a conspicuously poor
Renaissance portal only to go out under an uninteresting modern one, he
found himself lost in wonder that the Cathedral-builders of
Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth should have utterly failed in a town which
offered them such inspiring suggestions as the great Arch of Triumph and
the still greater Imperial Theatre, besides all the other remains of
Roman antiquity which, long after the building of Notre-Dame, the
practical Maurice of Orange demolished for the making of his mediaeval
castle.
[Sidenote: Cavaillon.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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