After an early start in sodden London and a dash under
the Channel we arrived in a less wet, but even colder France. I had always been
interested by the silhouette of the distant Basilica of St Quentin, a huge
mountain-like building soaring ominously in the distance. The journey had been
long enough already for a stop so we turned off the payage and proceeded
through the ugly outskirts of St Quentin, once the great Mediaeval city par excellence of Picardie. It turns out
that this wonderfully grand and imposing church was nearly destroyed completely
in the First World War, so it was quite a shock to see it looking so perfect
and serene.
Inside there is an M R James-like quiet and other-Worldly calm to this spiky Gothic building. The silence is full of ancient whispers and one expects to hear a distant thin metallic laughter from high up in the Triforium!
This place is Huge! For me it was like being a child
in a sweet shop...an empty, vast Gothic box of delights filled with treasures
like the hand of St Quentin, a great sculpture of St George with a head
modelled on King Louis XIV and the finest Baroque organ case in Northern
France. If any church is worthy of a spectral organ recital, this is it!
If one wants to have the thrill of a great French
Gothic church with none of the tourist rails and barriers go to St Quentin.
This church has been through enormous trauma, but it still stands, almost
impossibly tall restored to its original splendour wooing motorists off the
endless payages of Picardie!
The next stop was nearby Laon Cathedral, arguably the
finest early Gothic Mediaeval Cathedral in France, if not Europe. Unlike St
Quentin, Laon was not bombed to its foundations and it looks like an ancient
French hill-top City should do; great curtain walls, tiny winding streets,
squares and, dominating all around, the great Cathedral of Our Lady with no
less than five soaring towers of a projected seven. Lifesize stone animals gaze
down from hundreds of feet in the air and the silhouette of this utterly
extraordinary building is nothing short of Baroque in its sheer exuberance.
On entering
Laon Cathedral one is brought back down to earth, as the proportions are
comfortable and perfect. The stone is honey coloured and the architecture is
the finest it can be...this is a Rolls Royce of a building, even the Triforium
is vaulted beautifully in stone and the transepts have their own mini transepts
under their own twin towers. Renaissance facades, like the most exquisite mini
streets, mask the little chapels which form a continuous sequence around the
cathedral.
The Choir and Chancel, entered beneath a black and
gold Baroque screen, culminate in a great rose window and three lancets and a
flat, rather than the typically semi-circular apse, east end. Laon is a
masterpiece of a building and really like no other Cathedral I have ever
visited. It is hugely grand, displaying the finest possible craftsmanship and
has a magic and energy to it that falls nothing short of marvelous.
Nearby Vauclair Abbey, hidden deep in trees, is at the
other end of the spectrum as there is very little left apart from the
unmistakable atmosphere of an ancient Religious settlement. Fish ponds, broken
walls and the tall remains of a dovecote are all that is left of a once huge
building and the centre of an entire community.
One cant help but reflect upon the different fates of
these three buildings; the first rescued from almost certain ruin, the second
gloriously commanding its hilltop site as it has done for nearly a millennium
and the last a mere footprint of what it was.
Now fast forward a few hundred years and a few
thousand feet and in to the Alps!
Like most indigenous architecture which has grown out
of working alongside the natural environment, Chalet architecture is home-grown
and unmistakable in its style. As I sit in a luxurious modern chalet writing
this while the snow and wind howl around outside I am reflecting on the
traditional style of this particular house, with its timber construction,
balconies and great sloping roofs. Like the Churches discussed Chalets have
also followed
an architectural form and the variety of decoration is
as varied as the Alpine weather.
The modern chalet grew out of the old Alpine
farmstead, with its house with huge wide eaves and accommodation for man and
beast. Where there was once a cow stall there is now probably a sauna, but
nonetheless, modern conveniences have been fitted in to age old sensible
design. The herders, whose houses these would have been, would bring their
cattle up to the high ground in the Summer months and spend weeks making cheese
and butter to preserve the milk. The modern chalet girl/boy doesn’t know how
easy their lot is!
From holiness to holidays, architecture is alive and
well in France and Switzerland from sea-level to glacier!
Twitter: @oligerrish
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