A renaissance man for the twenty-first century!
There have been large communities of Jewish people living in Switzerland since the Middle Ages. Sadly, there were also large pogroms, so their history was hardly a pleasant one. I’ve shared some information about the Jewish community in Zürich in a recent blog post. During a brief period in the eighteeenth and nineteenth centuries, the […]
Not too far from downtown Stuttgart, Germany, sits a very small park with a very small pond but a very huge cathedral: What is NOT a mystery is what these things are: The pond is called the Feuersee (in German, “fire lake”) – and the cathedral is called the Johanneskirche. The church was built in 1864, […]
Probably not what you are thinking when you read the title. Here is a snap of the famous Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption of Clarement-Ferrand, in the city of the same name, in France: What’s absolutely amazing about this cathedral is its color. Claremont-Ferrand sits in an area of France filled with volcanoes, […]
Anyway touring around Southern France or travelling by car to Barcelona usually finds time to stop here, the ancient medieval UNESCO site known as the Cité de Carcasonne: It’s a truly massive fortified city high on a hill, complete with moats As well as impressive Gothic cathedrals If you are here and have the time, […]
Continuing the series, you may wonder what these three saints have in common? The answer is: a cathedral in Prague that is so large, ordinary photographers like me, without special equipment, are completely unable to capture the Prague Cathedral of Saints Vitus, Wenceslaus, and Adalbert in its full glory. So I display here some of […]
I took this snap from the inside of the Cathedral of St. Vitus, in Prague. I think any photographer with a highly adjustable camera can take great shots of stained glass windows – but remember I captured this on the first generation of tiny, pocket digital cameras, more than a decade ago. Unfortunately, the cathedral […]
About the only way you can take decent photographs of the massive European cathedrals is from a distance, as this snap overlooking the Rhein River near the German city of Köln shows:
If you’ve spent any time reading my blog, then you’ll know about a few of my blog passions. These are Hidden Canals, erstwhile important public works projects that today are slowly slipping into away from our perception; Great European Cathedrals, of which the greatest are generally in the tiniest towns and villages that no tourists ever visit; […]
Continuing the series, European cathedrals seem really to be excellent candidates for having backs that are better than fronts. This is Saint Étienne, also known in English as Saint Stephen: And here’s the church Église Saint-Étienne in Mulhouse, Alsace. As with many churches, the front is really nothing special to see: But walk around to the […]
It seems unreasonable to think that the streets in medieval cities were somehow planned. But when I travel through medieval cities, I can’t help but notice the large number of small streets that are optimally laid out to frame a view of the large, central cathedral. This one is Santiago de Compostella, in Spain (from […]
A seagull cruises the Aare River in Solothurn. In the background you can see the the St.-Ursen-Kathedrale: Solothurn is both a village AND a canton (national state) in Switzerland, and it’s name dates back to around the year 0 AD, where it was known by the Romans as Solodurum – so it is amazing how […]
As I’ve said before, you will likely never see a tourist in Metz, and yet it is one of the most extraordinary historic cities I’ve ever visited. You can see some other pictures I took in Metz, of a garden, of the birthplace of the Gregorian chant, and of a church.
These are the famous Apostles, Saint James, Saint Peter, and Saint Thomas: Technically, I am referring to Saint James, son of Zebedee, since there is a second apostle also named James. The Spanish people call Saint James by a different name, Santiago, and he is buried in a cathedral I visited in the Galician city of […]
This is Hannibal: And this is Salamanca, in western Spain: The cathedral somehow looks a bit tilted, so here is a second photo to assure you that it is not tilted. It also shows the Roman Bridge, which (unbelievably!) was built in the first century AD: I believe this is the first city that I’ve […]
If you’ve been to Strasbourg, then you know how it is. The cathedral is big and imposing and it stands in the center of the city and you can visit it. It’s surrounded by outdoor coffee shops where you can sit and look up at it, and if you can manage to hail a waiter you can […]
We take it for granted that buildings have frontsides – and that the front façades are somehow meant to be the most impressive. But this is the backside of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, and in my opinion it is far more impressive and enjoyable to look at than the front side. And what’s more: this […]