Bourgogne romane: Paray–le–Monial
[Sorry for the interruption in uploads yesterday, we were at Courchevel for two days as we needed to do some work in the apartment. Lots of snow at the resort, at last I got to put my 4WD and Nokian winter tires to good use!]
The Romanesque basilica of the Sacred Heart in the small town of Paray-le-Monial in southern Burgundy, is a Mediæval masterpiece known throughout the world.
Paray was a priory of the abbey of Cluny, and after a first church was built here and consecrated in 977, the one we see today was erected around 1050 and designed probably by Saint Hugo himself, abbot of Cluny.
It looks like a reduced, simplified copy of the gigantic church of Cluny, the largest church in Christendom ever until Saint Peter of Rome was rebuilt in the 16th century. That church, dubbed “Cluny III”, was mostly destroyed at the beginning of the 19th century, which is also why Paray is a very interesting testimony, architecturally speaking.
Just like the humble priory of Perrecy-les-Forges, which we visited before, Paray features a narthex, only on an obviously grander scale. These two photographs illustrate some of the columns and historied capitals
Bourgogne romane: Paray–le–Monial
[Sorry for the interruption in uploads yesterday, we were at Courchevel for two days as we needed to do some work in the apartment. Lots of snow at the resort, at last I got to put my 4WD and Nokian winter tires to good use!]
The Romanesque basilica of the Sacred Heart in the small town of Paray-le-Monial in southern Burgundy, is a Mediæval masterpiece known throughout the world.
Paray was a priory of the abbey of Cluny, and after a first church was built here and consecrated in 977, the one we see today was erected around 1050 and designed probably by Saint Hugo himself, abbot of Cluny.
It looks like a reduced, simplified copy of the gigantic church of Cluny, the largest church in Christendom ever until Saint Peter of Rome was rebuilt in the 16th century. That church, dubbed “Cluny III”, was mostly destroyed at the beginning of the 19th century, which is also why Paray is a very interesting testimony, architecturally speaking.
Just like the humble priory of Perrecy-les-Forges, which we visited before, Paray features a narthex, only on an obviously grander scale. These two photographs illustrate some of the columns and historied capitals