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A south-west elevation of Coventry Cathedral and the ruins of the original which were destroyed by aerial bombing in 1940 (note this building is oriented perpendicular to the conventional east-west geographical orientation).
The present Coventry Cathedral is topped by Geoffrey Clarke’s sculpture in the form of a winged cross on a 26 metre manganese bronze alloy flèche, in place of a conventional spire, which was airlifted on top of the roof by helicopter. When once asked sarcastically what a radio pylon was doing on top of his cathedral, architect Sir Basil Spence said, “To receive messages from heaven.”
The original St Michael’s was almost completely destroyed by the Luftwaffe; the rubble was not cleared for seven years. Only the tower, spire, the outer wall and the bronze effigy and tomb of its first bishop, Huyshe Yeatman-Biggs, survived. Largely constructed in the late 14th and 15th Centuries in red sandstone, it was one of the largest parish churches in England and only elevated to cathedral status in 1918 with the creation of the Diocese of Coventry as a result of rapid population growth in the industrial West Midlands. The Perpendicular Gothic spire still dominates the site: the top of the weathervane is 88 metres above the ground, making it the tallest structure in Coventry; among Church of England cathedrals, only Norwich and Salisbury have a higher spire. The ruins remain a permanent memorial to the 600 or so residents of Coventry who died on the night the cathedral was destroyed. The site of the ruins is open to visitors is are occasionally used for acts of worship, particularly those related to reconciliation.
Just occasionally people tell me they don’t like Coventry Cathedral. I couldn’t disagree more; a powerful symbol of Resurrection, restored to a very different life barely twenty years after being destroyed in the Blitz on 14 November 1940. The Modernist Cathedral of St Michael of the 20th Century both surrounded by and incomprehensible without the ruins of 14th Century building that surrounds it.
Coventry Cathedral incarnates the twin and interconnected British revivals of the two decades after the end of the Second World War – a revival of high culture and a revival of Christian faith. Basil Spence’s cathedral housing Jacob Epstein’s sculptures, John Piper’s massive arrangements of stained glass into windows, and Graham Sutherland’s tapestry, still in 2021 the largest in the world, represent collectively a totemic achievement in modernist visual arts and architecture.
The brief for the competition to select the architect of the new Cathedral demanded that the design emphasise the celebration of the Eucharist; Spence himself had a further vision of the building as the repository of great modern works of art. He described his building as “a plain jewel casket”. Piper’s windows cast shafts of colour into the heart of the nave, while the plain glass West Screen, which faces to the geographical south, allows much natural light into the building, essential given that the east end is entirely filled with Graham Sutherland’s great tapestry, still the largest in the world at 22 metres tall by 12 metres wide.
Coventry Cathedral was built to a tight budget – “not more than £985,000” – and making much use of reinforced concrete, the new cathedral was constructed in just six years, between Queen Elizabeth II laying the foundation stone on 23 March 1956 and the dedication ceremony on 25 May 1962.
Could there have been a finer or more appropriate setting for the world première of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem on 30 May 1962? On that night, the Cathedral’s great post-War religious theme was also incarnated in the three soloists: Peter Pears (Britten’s partner) from the host nation, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau from Germany, Galina Vishnevskaya from the USSR, representing three belligerent nations. That tri-national partnership continues to be symbolised by the presence of a replica of the Stalingrad Madonna given by the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin, where the original hangs, with a second copy being in Kazan Cathedral in Volgograd.
A building that breathes with the presence of the Holy Spirit, giving new life the Church in every generation.
Chichester Cathedral, formally known as the Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity, is the seat of the Anglican Bishop of Chichester. It is located in Chichester, in West Sussex, United Kingdom. It was founded as a cathedral in 1075. I visited again on the 28th of July 2021. Had a nice walk around inside the cathedral and and around the outside too where the changing clouds made an interest back drop
St Andrew’s Church in the Somerset village of Blagdon (pop. 1,116), was built in the 15th century. It is a Grade II* listed building.
The church has a 35-metre-high tower, one of the tallest in Somerset. Apart from the tower, rest of the church was rebuilt in 1907–09 by Lord Winterstoke (of the Wills tobacco family). A piscina with a 12th Century frieze of the four Evangelists has somehow survived multiple re-buildings and attests to a Norman church on the same site.
Augustus Toplady was serving as curate of St Andrew's in the 1760s when he wrote the hymn Rock of Ages. It is believed that he was inspired to write the lyrics while sheltering under a rock in nearby Burrington Combe.
This description incorporates text from the English Wikipedia.
Mells (pop. 628), 3½ miles/6 km west of Frome, is one of the prettiest villages in Somerset, and its parish church, St Andrew's, is perhaps its finest feature. This Grade I listed Perpendicular Gothic church predominantly dates from the late 15th Century, although a previous church stood on the site for centuries, as still attested to by a Norman font and 14th Century sanctus bell. The tower dates to 1446. The late 15th Century fan vaulting is particularly impressive. St Mary's was restored in the mid-19th Century.
The church has close connections with the local Asquith family and the Horners who lived at Mells Manor.
A number of notable individuals are buried at the church, or have commemorative memorials within it. Interments include: the poet Siegfried Sassoon; the priest, Ronald Knox; politicians Sir Maurice Bonham Carter, Violet Bonham Carter, Baroness Asquith, Christopher Hollis, and Reginald McKenna (in the McKenna family grave); the novelist George A. Birmingham aka James Owen Hannay, and Katharine Asquith, widow of Raymond Asquith.
This description incorporates text from the English Wikipedia.
Southwark Cathedral in south London dates back to 1106AD but has been a holy site for many years longer. I took these photos with my Canon camera. The cathedral is surrounded by other buildings and is difficult to get any long shots
Southwark Cathedral in south London dates back to 1106AD but has been a holy site for many years longer. I took these photos with my Canon camera. The cathedral is surrounded by other buildings and is difficult to get any long shots
The weathervane on the south-west corner of the tower of St Mary's in the Devon town of Axminster. Often simply known as "The Minster", St Mary's has Norman origins, although much of the building dates from the 13th-15th centuries. The earliest surviving section of the church is a reset doorway from the Norman period, while the tower, rebuilt in the 13th century, was restored in 1896. The church suffered an arson attack in 2014, and underwent restoration and repair work before reopening in 2015.
This description incorporates text from the English Wikipedia.
Looking west along the nave of Winchester Cathedral to the great West Window, which was constructed in the mid-14th Century. The glass was destroyed by Parliamentarian soldiers in December 1642. It was lovingly restored by the townspeople as a mosaic following the Restoration of the Monarchy, but it has never regained its original appearance, the damage was too great.
The Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity, Saint Peter, Saint Paul and Saint Swithun, commonly known as Winchester Cathedral, is the cathedral of the city of Winchester, England, and is among the largest of its kind in Northern Europe. The cathedral is the seat of the Bishop of Winchester and is the mother church for the Church of England’s Diocese of Winchester.
The cathedral as it stands today was built from 1079 to 1532. It has a very long and very wide nave in the Perpendicular Gothic style, an Early English retrochoir, and Norman transepts and tower. With an overall length of 170 metres, it is the longest medieval cathedral in the world, and only surpassed by five more churches, four of them built in the 20th Century. It is also the sixth-largest cathedral by area in England.
The first Christian church in Winchester can be traced back to c. 648, when King Cenwalh of Wessex built a small, cross-shaped building just north of the present building. This ‘Old Minster’, became the cathedral for the new Diocese of Winchester in 662, but no trace of it other than its ground plan exists today. From 963 to 993, bishop Æthelwold and then Alphege greatly expanded the church, which was briefly the largest church in Europe. Also on the same site was the New Minster, in direct competition with the neighbouring Old Minster, begun by Alfred the Great but completed in 901 by his son Edward the Elder.
The present building, however, was begun after the Norman Conquest, perhaps inevitably. William the Conqueror installed his friend and relative Walkelin as the first Norman Bishop of Winchester in 1070, and nine years later, in 1079, Walkelin began the construction of a huge new Norman cathedral, on a site just to the south of the Old and New Minsters, the site of the present building. The new cathedral was consecrated with the completion of the east end in 1093, and the following day, demolition of the New and Old Minsters began and left virtually no remains.
Work quickly progressed to the transepts and central tower, and these were certainly complete by 1100. In 1107, the central tower fell but was reconstructed and much of the work on this core of the present building was completed by 1129 to a very high standard, much of it surviving today.
A new Early English retrochoir was started in 1202, but the next expansions after that would not start until 1346, when Bishop Edington demolished the Norman west front and began building a new Perpendicular Gothic facade, featuring a huge west window, which still stands today. Edington also began renovation of the nave, but this was mostly carried out by his successors, most notably William of Wykeham and his master mason, William Wynford, who remodelled the massive Norman nave into a soaring Perpendicular Gothic masterpiece. This they achieved by encasing the Norman stone in new ashlar, recutting the piers with Gothic mouldings and pointed arches, and reorganising the three-tier nave into two tiers, by extending the arcade upwards into what was the triforium and extending the clerestory downwards to meet it. The wooden ceiling was replaced with a decorative stone vault. Following Wykeham's death in 1404, this remodelling work continued under successive bishops, being completed ca. 1420.
Between then and 1528, major rebuilding and expansion was carried out on the Norman choir and Early English retrochoir. This work included the building of further chantry chapels, the replacement of the Norman east end with a Perpendicular Gothic presbytery, and the extension of Luci's retrochoir into a Lady Chapel. Unlike the rebuilding of the nave some 100 years earlier, the Gothic presbytery was vaulted in wood and painted to look like stone, as at York Minster. With its progressive extensions, the east end is now about 34 metres beyond that of Walkelin's building.
With Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries, the Priory of Saint Swithun, was dissolved in 1539, and the cathedral’s shrines and altar were destroyed. The monastic buildings, including the cloister and chapter house, were later demolished, mostly during the 1560–1580 tenure of the reformist bishop Robert Horne.
The 17th century saw important changes to the interior, including the erection of a choir screen by Inigo Jones in 1638–39, the insertion of a wooden fan vault underneath the crossing tower (previously the tower was open to the church) and the destruction of much medieval glass and imagery by Parliamentarian soldiers in December 1642, including the near-complete destruction of the massive Great West Window by Cromwell and his forces. The window was put back together by the townspeople as a mosaic following the Restoration of the Monarchy, but it has never regained its original appearance, the damage was too great.
In the 18th century, many visitors commented on the neglect of the cathedral and the town; Daniel Defoe described the latter in about 1724 as “a place of no trade… no manufacture, no navigation”. Major restoration, however, followed in the early 19th Century under the direction of architect William Garbett and then John Nash
At the turn of the 20th century, Winchester Cathedral was in grave danger of collapse. Huge cracks had appeared in the walls, some of them large enough for a small child to crawl into, the walls were bulging and leaning, and stone fell from the walls. After several false solutions that may have made things worse, over six years from 1906-12, diver William Walker worked six or seven hour shifts every day diving through septic water full of corpses and laying a new cement under-layer for the cathedral and its foundations. Walker laid more than 25,000 bags of concrete, 115,000 concrete blocks, and 900,000 bricks. In 1911, flying buttresses were also added along the length of the south nave to complete the work.
In 2011, a new single-story extension in the corner of the north presbytery aisle was completed, the first new extension on the cathedral since the mid-16th Century, housing toilet facilities, storage and a new boiler. An extensive programme of interior restoration was completed between 2012-19.
This description incorporates text from the English Wikipedia.
This Fridays trip was a short one to Winchester Cathedral. The original cathedral was founded in 642AD an todays cathedral was built by the Normans in 1079. Winchester in Hampshire was once the capital city of Anglo Saxon England. Winchester cathedral is one of the largest cathedrals in Europe.
It is well worth reading the Wiki page if you are interested in English history.
A link to my article in Ireland's Own Magazine
www.irelandsown.ie/st-audoens-church-a-medieval-gem-in-th...
St Audoen’s Church is the only remaining medieval parish church in Dublin. It is dedicated to the seventh-century bishop of Rouen and patron saint of Normandy.
St Margaret's Chapel in Tewkesbury Abbey, where the Blessed Sacrament is reserved, is set aside for private prayer and meditation. This is off the North Ambulatory.
The Abbey Church of St Mary the Virgin, Tewkesbury – commonly known as Tewkesbury Abbey – is located in the English county of Gloucestershire. A former Benedictine monastery, it is now a parish church. Considered one of the finest examples of Norman architecture in Britain, it has the largest Romanesque crossing tower in Europe. Tewkesbury had been a centre for worship since the 7th Century. A priory was established there in the 10th Century. The present building was started in the early 12th Century. It was unsuccessfully used as a sanctuary in the Wars of the Roses. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, it became the parish church for the town. George Gilbert Scott led the Restoration of the building in the late 19th Century.
The churchmanship of the Abbey is strongly Anglo-Catholic.
This description incorporates text from the English Wikipedia.
Southwark Cathedral in south London dates back to 1106AD but has been a holy site for many years longer. I took these photos with my Samsung phone camera. The cathedral is surrounded by other buildings and is difficult to get any long shots
...imagine to be here...
take a boat and sail on the lake towards North....
this is one of the possible views of Sirmione you can have
on the Garda lake, Southern part, once upon a time a great castle... where history meets nature.... the characteristic of this magic lake in Northern Italy...
The Scaliger castle (13th century). This is a rare example of medieval port fortification, which was used by the Scaliger fleet. The building of this complex started in 1277 by Mastino della Scala. It presents the typical Ghibelline swallowtail merlons and the curtain-walls (with three corner towers) in pebbles alternating with two horizontal bands of brick courses. The walls on the inside were finished with plaster with graffiti, simulating blocks of stone. The castle stands at a strategic place at the entrance to the peninsula. It is surrounded by a moat and it can only be entered by two drawbridges. The castle was established mainly as a protection against enemies, but also against the locals. The main room houses a small museum with local finds from the Roman era and a few medieval artifacts.
The small church Sant’Anna della Rocca, next to the castle. It dates from the 12th century and was used mainly by the garrison and the few local villagers. The frescoes in the church date from the 14th - 17th century.
The church of San Pietro in Mavino, built in Lombard times (A.D. 765) but renovated in the early 14th century. At the portal one can see a brick wall with the date 1320. It is secluded from the town and is situated on the hill. The term "mavino" refers to the Latin phrase "in summas vineas" (up in the vineyards). The church has a rectangular plan and is oriented east-west. The cancel contains three apses. The one in the middle shows a Christ Pantocrator in Byzantine tradition; the one on the left a Madonna Enthroned; the one on the right a Crucifixion. The ceiling is made of wooden beams. The church containss frescoes from the 12th-16th centuries. The Romanesque bell tower dates from 1070. The church has been used in the past as a military hospital and its surroundings as a cemetery for plague victims.
The church Santa Maria Maggiore (late 15th century) is located in the town centre. It stands on the site of the former Lombard church of San Martino (second half of the 8th century). It has a rectangular shape with a polygonal apse and is oriented east-west. It has a single nave, divided by three arches. It is decorated with early 15th-century frescoes. The frescoes at the bottom of the north wall even belong to an earlier period. The contemporary wooden statue of the Madonna Enthroned is also of special interest.
for more informations:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirmione
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“It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera…
They are made with the eye, heart and head.”
Henry Cartier Bresson
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Southwark Cathedral in south London dates back to 1106AD but has been a holy site for many years longer. I took these photos with my Samsung phone camera. The cathedral is surrounded by other buildings and is difficult to get any long shots
Looking up the monumental St Michael’s Steps, an important part of the Coventry Cathedral site and an important pedestrian route in Coventry City Centre. The porch of Coventry Cathedral is an integral part of Basil Spence’s design, connecting the current building to the bomb-destroyed ruins of its predecessor. On the right of shot is the plain glass West Screen which does so much to light the nave of the cathedral (as the modern cathedral is geographically oriented perpendicular to the ecclesiastical sense, this faces south towards the midday sun). Peeking through is the floodlit 72 metre high spire of the nearby Holy Trinity Parish Church, originally 14th Century but rebuilt in the 1660s.
Just occasionally people tell me they don’t like Coventry Cathedral. I couldn’t disagree more; a powerful symbol of Resurrection, restored to a very different life barely twenty years after being destroyed in the Blitz on 14 November 1940. The Modernist Cathedral of St Michael of the 20th Century both surrounded by and incomprehensible without the ruins of 14th Century building that surrounds it.
Coventry Cathedral incarnates the twin and interconnected British revivals of the two decades after the end of the Second World War – a revival of high culture and a revival of Christian faith. Basil Spence’s cathedral housing Jacob Epstein’s sculptures, John Piper’s massive arrangements of stained glass into windows, and Graham Sutherland’s tapestry, still in 2021 the largest in the world, represent collectively a totemic achievement in modernist visual arts and architecture.
The brief for the competition to select the architect of the new Cathedral demanded that the design emphasise the celebration of the Eucharist; Spence himself had a further vision of the building as the repository of great modern works of art. He described his building as “a plain jewel casket”. Piper’s windows cast shafts of colour into the heart of the nave, while the plain glass West Screen, which faces to the geographical south, allows much natural light into the building, essential given that the east end is entirely filled with Graham Sutherland’s great tapestry, still the largest in the world at 22 metres tall by 12 metres wide.
Coventry Cathedral was built to a tight budget – “not more than £985,000” – and making much use of reinforced concrete, the new cathedral was constructed in just six years, between Queen Elizabeth II laying the foundation stone on 23 March 1956 and the dedication ceremony on 25 May 1962.
Could there have been a finer or more appropriate setting for the world première of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem on 30 May 1962? On that night, the Cathedral’s great post-War religious theme was also incarnated in the three soloists: Peter Pears (Britten’s partner) from the host nation, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau from Germany, Galina Vishnevskaya from the USSR, representing three belligerent nations. That tri-national partnership continues to be symbolised by the presence of a replica of the Stalingrad Madonna given by the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin, where the original hangs, with a second copy being in Kazan Cathedral in Volgograd.
A building that breathes with the presence of the Holy Spirit, giving new life the Church in every generation.
The medieval Turku Castle, Finland.
Turku Castle is a medieval building in the city of Turku in Finland. Together with Turku Cathedral, the castle is one of the oldest buildings still in use in Finland. Turku Castle is the largest surviving medieval building in Finland. It was founded in the late 13th century and stands on the banks of the Aura River.
A start was made on building the castle in about 1280. The Swedish conquerors of Finland intended it originally as a military fortress. During the next two centuries its defences were strengthened and living quarters were added. The castle served as a bastion and administrative centre in Eastland, as Finland was known during the time as a province of Sweden. The main part of the castle was extended considerably during the 16th century after Gustav Vasa had ascended the Swedish throne and his son John headed the Finnish administration following his promotion to duke.
Late 15th Century window, part of John Stokys' rebuilding of the North Aisle of Holy Cross, Seend, with late Victorian glass. Georgian and Victorian memorials surround it.
Holy Cross is the parish church in the Wiltshire village of Seend (pop. 1,132), just outside Devizes. It is part of the Church of England Diocese of Salisbury. The west tower dates to the 14th Century (with a 15th Century bell stage), most of the church dates slightly later, to around 1450, with the North Aisle rebuilt in 1498, and the chancel much more modern, being largely the product of an 1876 'restoration' by A.J. Style.
The church has a rich collection of Georgian and Victorian memorials, and some pleasant Victorian and Edwardian glass.
The organ console, dizzyingly located, offers a fine vantage for photographing the clerestory and indeed the interior of the church as a whole.
I took this shot before-and-after I celebrated Mass and preached here on a Sunday morning.
Saturday 14th of August 2021 and a trip to the closest Cathedral to me in Portsmouth. Portsmouth Cathedral was built in 1180AD and paid for my a local wealthy Norman merchant. It has a very interesting history. In 1449AD the Bishop of Chichester was murdered in Portsmouth by sailors so the cathedral was closed for a time and the people of Portsmouth excommunicated! The Cathedral is just a short walk from the closest beach at the Hot Walls.
© Carlo Natale
Church of San Secondo - Magnano, Biella, Italy
The origins of this church date to the first half of the eleventh century and it is thought it may have been founded by Benedictines. At the time the village of Magnano surrounded the church. For strategic reasons the village moved shortly after up the hill to its present location and when the construction of the church of Santa Marta began, in 1606, permission was granted to demolish San Secondo in order to use the materials for the new church. Fortunately, this initiative met with opposition from the townspeople and, instead, the church was restored in the baroque style prevalent in the seventeenth century. In 1968/70 the church was once again restored, this time to its original Romanesque style and stands as a typical example of medieval architecture.
The bell tower is a fine examples of Romanesque art.
The west front of Winchester Cathedral just before sunset on a winter afternoon with gentle haze, fronted by the Winchester War Memorial.
The Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity, Saint Peter, Saint Paul and Saint Swithun, commonly known as Winchester Cathedral, is the cathedral of the city of Winchester, England, and is among the largest of its kind in Northern Europe. The cathedral is the seat of the Bishop of Winchester and is the mother church for the Church of England’s Diocese of Winchester.
The cathedral as it stands today was built from 1079 to 1532. It has a very long and very wide nave in the Perpendicular Gothic style, an Early English retrochoir, and Norman transepts and tower. With an overall length of 170 metres, it is the longest medieval cathedral in the world, and only surpassed by five more churches, four of them built in the 20th Century. It is also the sixth-largest cathedral by area in England.
The first Christian church in Winchester can be traced back to c. 648, when King Cenwalh of Wessex built a small, cross-shaped building just north of the present building. This ‘Old Minster’, became the cathedral for the new Diocese of Winchester in 662, but no trace of it other than its ground plan exists today. From 963 to 993, bishop Æthelwold and then Alphege greatly expanded the church, which was briefly the largest church in Europe. Also on the same site was the New Minster, in direct competition with the neighbouring Old Minster, begun by Alfred the Great but completed in 901 by his son Edward the Elder.
The present building, however, was begun after the Norman Conquest, perhaps inevitably. William the Conqueror installed his friend and relative Walkelin as the first Norman Bishop of Winchester in 1070, and nine years later, in 1079, Walkelin began the construction of a huge new Norman cathedral, on a site just to the south of the Old and New Minsters, the site of the present building. The new cathedral was consecrated with the completion of the east end in 1093, and the following day, demolition of the New and Old Minsters began and left virtually no remains.
Work quickly progressed to the transepts and central tower, and these were certainly complete by 1100. In 1107, the central tower fell but was reconstructed and much of the work on this core of the present building was completed by 1129 to a very high standard, much of it surviving today.
A new Early English retrochoir was started in 1202, but the next expansions after that would not start until 1346, when Bishop Edington demolished the Norman west front and began building a new Perpendicular Gothic facade, featuring a huge west window, which still stands today. Edington also began renovation of the nave, but this was mostly carried out by his successors, most notably William of Wykeham and his master mason, William Wynford, who remodelled the massive Norman nave into a soaring Perpendicular Gothic masterpiece. This they achieved by encasing the Norman stone in new ashlar, recutting the piers with Gothic mouldings and pointed arches, and reorganising the three-tier nave into two tiers, by extending the arcade upwards into what was the triforium and extending the clerestory downwards to meet it. The wooden ceiling was replaced with a decorative stone vault. Following Wykeham's death in 1404, this remodelling work continued under successive bishops, being completed ca. 1420.
Between then and 1528, major rebuilding and expansion was carried out on the Norman choir and Early English retrochoir. This work included the building of further chantry chapels, the replacement of the Norman east end with a Perpendicular Gothic presbytery, and the extension of Luci's retrochoir into a Lady Chapel. Unlike the rebuilding of the nave some 100 years earlier, the Gothic presbytery was vaulted in wood and painted to look like stone, as at York Minster. With its progressive extensions, the east end is now about 34 metres beyond that of Walkelin's building.
With Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries, the Priory of Saint Swithun, was dissolved in 1539, and the cathedral’s shrines and altar were destroyed. The monastic buildings, including the cloister and chapter house, were later demolished, mostly during the 1560–1580 tenure of the reformist bishop Robert Horne.
The 17th century saw important changes to the interior, including the erection of a choir screen by Inigo Jones in 1638–39, the insertion of a wooden fan vault underneath the crossing tower (previously the tower was open to the church) and the destruction of much medieval glass and imagery by Parliamentarian soldiers in December 1642, including the near-complete destruction of the massive Great West Window by Cromwell and his forces. The window was put back together by the townspeople as a mosaic following the Restoration of the Monarchy, but it has never regained its original appearance, the damage was too great.
In the 18th century, many visitors commented on the neglect of the cathedral and the town; Daniel Defoe described the latter in about 1724 as “a place of no trade… no manufacture, no navigation”. Major restoration, however, followed in the early 19th Century under the direction of architect William Garbett and then John Nash
At the turn of the 20th century, Winchester Cathedral was in grave danger of collapse. Huge cracks had appeared in the walls, some of them large enough for a small child to crawl into, the walls were bulging and leaning, and stone fell from the walls. After several false solutions that may have made things worse, over six years from 1906-12, diver William Walker worked six or seven hour shifts every day diving through septic water full of corpses and laying a new cement under-layer for the cathedral and its foundations. Walker laid more than 25,000 bags of concrete, 115,000 concrete blocks, and 900,000 bricks. In 1911, flying buttresses were also added along the length of the south nave to complete the work.
In 2011, a new single-story extension in the corner of the north presbytery aisle was completed, the first new extension on the cathedral since the mid-16th Century, housing toilet facilities, storage and a new boiler. An extensive programme of interior restoration was completed between 2012-19.
This description incorporates text from the English Wikipedia.
Gamla stan dates back to the 13th century, and consists of medieval alleyways, cobbled streets, and archaic architecture. North German architecture has had a strong influence in the Old Town's construction.
The present alleys only give a vague glimpse of the appearance of the medieval city where the gables of the building were facing the streets and contained window bays for offering goods of sale; where filth, the bumpy paving and hand-drawn vehicles made walking circumstantial; and where odours and scents from dung, food, fishes, leather, furnaces, and seasonal spices mingled. During nights (and certainly during the long winters) the city was completely dark, save for exceptional fire watchers and nocturnal ramblers who used torches to find their bearing.
Wikipedia
IMAGINE TO BE HERE...
while sun is setting on the big city...
past present and future closed in one magic light...
the miracle of a moment, the enchanting view of infinite ...
a dream with opened eyes...
while the day was going to be over...
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Sforza Castle
is a castle in Milan, northern Italy. It was built in the 15th century by Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, on the remains of a 14th-century fortification. Later renovated and enlarged, in the 16th and 17th centuries it was one of the largest citadels in Europe. Extensively rebuilt by Luca Beltrami in 1891–1905, it now houses several of the city's museums and art collections.
The original construction was ordered by local lord Galeazzo II Visconti in 1358–c. 1370;[1] this castle was known as Castello di Porta Giova (or Porta Zubia), from the name of a gate in walls located nearby.[2] His successors Gian Galeazzo, Giovanni Maria and Filippo Maria Visconti enlarged it, until it became a square-plan castle with 200 m-long sides, four towers at the corners and up to 7-metre-thick (23 ft) walls.[2] The castle was the main residence in the city of its Visconti lords, and was destroyed by the short-lived Golden Ambrosian Republic which ousted them in 1447.
In 1450, Francesco Sforza, once he shattered the republicans, began reconstruction of the castle to turn it into his princely residence. In 1452 he hired sculptor and architect Filarete to design and decorate the central tower, which is still known as Torre del Filarete. After Francesco's death, the construction was continued by his son Galeazzo Maria, under architect Benedetto Ferrini. The decoration was executed by local painters. In 1476, during the regency of Bona of Savoy, the tower with her name was built.
The castle in the 16th century.
In 1494 Ludovico Sforza became lord of Milan, and called numerous artists to decorate the castle. These include Leonardo da Vinci (who frescoed several rooms, in collaboration with Bernardino Zenale and Bernardino Butinone) and Bramante, who painted frescoes in the Sala del Tesoro;[3] the Sala della Balla was decorated with Francesco Sforza's deeds. Around 1498, Leonardo worked at the ceiling of the Sala delle Asse, painting decorations of vegetable motifs. In the following years, however, the castle was damaged by assaults from Italian, French and German troops; a bastion, known as tenaglia was added, perhaps designed by Cesare Cesariano. After the French victory in the 1515 Battle of Marignano, the defeated Maximilian Sforza, his Swiss mercenaries, and the cardinal-bishop of Sion retreated into the castle. However, King Francis I of France followed them into Milan, and his sappers placed mines under the castle's foundations, whereupon the defenders capitulated. In 1521, in a period in which it was used as a weapons depot, the Torre del Filarete exploded. When Francesco II Sforza returned briefly to power in Milan, he had the fortress restored and enlarged, and a part of it adapted as residence for his wife, Christina of Denmark.
Coat of arms of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, painted on an interior ceiling.
Under the Spanish domination which followed, the castle became a citadel, as the governor's seat was moved to the Ducal Palace (1535). Its garrison varied from 1,000 to 3,000 men, led by a Spanish castellan.[2] In 1550 works began to adapt the castle to modern fortification style, as an hexagon (originally pentagon)-shaped star fort, following the addition of 12 bastions. The external fortifications reached 3 km in length and covered an area of 25.9 hectares.[4] The castle remained in use as a fort also after the Spaniards were replaced by the Austrians in Lombardy.
Journal of Jean-Claude Locquin describing the trenches made around the castle during the Napoleonic rule. Archives nationales de France.
Most of the outer fortifications were demolished during the period of Napoleonic rule in Milan under the Cisalpine Republic. The semi-circular Piazza Castello was constructed around the city side of the castle, surrounded by a radial street layout of new urban blocks bounded by the Foro Buonoparte. The area on the "country" side of the castle was laid out as a 700-by-700-metre (2,300 by 2,300 ft) square parade ground known as Piazza d'Armi.
After the unification of Italy in the 19th century, the castle was transferred from military use to the city of Milan. Parco Sempione, one of the largest parks in the city, was created on the former parade grounds.
The government of Milan undertook restoration works, directed by Luca Beltrami. The Via Dante was cut through the medieval street layout in the 1880s to provide a direct promenade between the castle and the Duomo on axis with the main gate. The central tower, known as the Torre Filarete, above the main city entrance was rebuilt, on the basis of 16th-century drawings, between 1900 and 1905 as a monument to King Umberto I.
Allied bombardment of Milan in 1943 during World War II severely damaged the castle. The post-war reconstruction of the building for museum purposes was undertaken by the BBPR architectural partnership.
FOR A DETAILED DESCRIPTION:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sforza_Castle
FOR THE PLACE:
wikimapia.org/#lang=it&lat=45.470281&lon=9.180381...
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they are made with the eye, heart and head.”
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Wonderful Arundel Castle in West Sussex England. This Norman castle dates back to 1067 and is the seat of the Duke of Norfolk.
Holy Trinity is the parish church for the Berkshire village of Cookham, and is particularly associated with the artist Sir Stanley Spencer. It is part of the Church of England’s Diocese of Oxford.
Holy Trinity is a Grade II* listed building containing several significant monuments. Although the earliest stone church building may have existed from 750, and there was a Saxon monastery here by the 8th Century, the earliest identifiable part of the current church is the Lady Chapel, built in the late 12th Century on the site of the cell of a female anchorite who lived next to the church. It was extended and improved several times between then and the reformation, with the tower added around 1500. It was “restored” by our Victorian friends in 1860.
Cookham (pop. 5,200) is located between Maidenhead and High Wycombe in the outer reaches of London's commuter belt. It is particularly famous as the home of artist Sir Stanley Spencer; the village and its people were the predominant subjects of his work, often transmogrified into Biblical themes and scenes. Kenneth Grahame, who lived in one of the village's sub-hamlets as a child, is said to have been inspired by the River Thames at Cookham to write The Wind in the Willows. In 2011, The Daily Telegraph deemed Cookham Britain's second richest village.
Travelled up to Salisbury today to revisit the wonderful cathedral. It has the tallest spire in the United Kingdom. I climbed to the top of the spire last time I visited back in 2014. The tower is not open at the moment due to Covid-19 rules on social distancing. Salisbury cathedral is one of our newer Norman cathedrals as it was not built until 1220AD. Sadly the weather today as you can see was cloudy and overcast.
View across the fields Bishops Cannings near Devizes in Wiltshire, with autumn colours crowned by the spire of the village's fine parish church, St Mary the Virgin.
This church may be built on the site of a Saxon original but the magnificent 41 metre spire was added during the 15th Century church expansion boom on top of a late 12th Century building. Although the village even today has a population of only 1,800 or so, the chantry chapel attached to the church was richly endowed with lands, making this one of the most impressive village parish churches in Wiltshire, and a prominent landmark from the A361 Devizes to Avebury road.
Wells Cathedral in Somerset is dedicated to St Andrew the Apostle, and is the seat of the Bishop of Bath and Wells. The present building dates from 1175 to 1490, an earlier church having been built on the site in 705. It is moderately sized among the medieval cathedrals of England, falling between those of massive proportions, such as Lincoln and York, and the much smaller cathedrals of Oxford and Carlisle.
The cloisters were built in the late 13th century and largely rebuilt from 1430 to 1508. They have wide openings divided by mullions and transoms, and tracery in the Perpendicular Gothic style. The vault has lierne ribs that form octagons at the centre of each compartment, the joints of each rib having decorative bosses. The eastern range is of two storeys, of which the upper is the library built in the 15th century.
Because Wells Cathedral was secular rather than monastic, cloisters were not a practical necessity. They were omitted from several other secular cathedrals but were built here and at Chichester. Explanations for their construction at these two secular cathedrals range from the processional to the aesthetic. As at Chichester, there is no northern range to the cloisters. In monastic cloisters it was the north range, benefiting most from winter sunlight, that was often used as a scriptorium.
Known as the "most Corsican of Corsica's towns", Sartene is an ancient place steeped in the traditions of superstition and vendetta. Even today it retains a fascinatingly sombre atmosphere.
Set high on a hill, the perfectly preserved Old Town has high granite walls, tall townhouses, with steep steps to guard against unexpected attack, and a maze of narrow passageways.
With castle ruins dating from the beginning of the 13th century, Sartene was the home of the mighty Della Rocca family until defeated by the Genoese in the early 16th century.
The town was subject to various anti-Genoese sieges, including one by the King of Algiers in 1583 who abducted a third of the population into slavery. Internal vendettas were also rife throughout Sartene's history. In the 1830s, a bloody feud between two families led to windows being bricked up and guards patrolling the streets, resulting in Sartene's tall fortress-type houses.
Wonderful Arundel Castle in West Sussex England. The lower outer castle wall and main gate to the castle. The castle has protection on this lower side from the tidal river Arun. Photo taken with my Canon DSLR camera.
Arundel Castle is a restored and remodelled medieval castle in Arundel, West Sussex, England. It was established by Roger de Montgomery in the 11th century. The castle was damaged in the English Civil War and then restored in the 18th and early 19th centuries by Charles Howard, 11th Duke of Norfolk. Further restoration and embellishment was undertaken from the 1890s by Charles Alban Buckler for the 15th Duke.
Since the 11th century, the castle has been the seat of the Earls of Arundel and the Dukes of Norfolk. It is a Grade I listed building.
The original structure was a motte-and-bailey castle. Roger de Montgomery was declared the first Earl of Arundel as the King granted him the property as part of a much larger package of hundreds of manors. Roger, who was a cousin of William the Conqueror, had stayed in Normandy to keep the peace there while William was away in England. He was rewarded for his loyalty with extensive lands in the Welsh Marches and across the country, together with one fifth of Sussex (Arundel Rape). He began work on Arundel Castle in around 1067.
Between 1101 and 1102 the castle was besieged by the forces of Henry I after its holder Robert of Bellême rebelled. The siege ended with the castle surrendering to the king. The castle then passed to Adeliza of Louvain (who had previously been married to Henry I) and her husband William d'Aubigny. Empress Matilda stayed in the castle, in 1139. It then passed down the d'Aubigny line until the death of Hugh d'Aubigny, Earl of Arundel in 1243. John Fitzalan then inherited jure matris the castle and honour of Arundel, by which, according to Henry VI's "admission" of 1433, he was later retrospectively held to have become de jure Earl of Arundel.
The FitzAlan male line ceased on the death of Henry Fitzalan, 12th Earl of Arundel, whose daughter and heiress Mary FitzAlan married Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk in 1555, to whose descendants the castle and earldom passed.
In 1643, during the First English Civil War, the castle was besieged. The 800 royalists inside surrendered after 18 days. Afterwards in 1653 Parliament ordered the slighting of the castle; however "weather probably destroyed more"
Housed in one of the Old Town's most historic buildings dating back to the 13th century, Le Bonaparte has crafted an exquisite concord between memorably elevating the traditions of French cuisine and the grand ambiance of their building, expertly restored to the way it would have felt in the 17th century when it was owned by the Mayor of Tallinn.
Today, it's no wonder why dignitaries and politicians still dine there - from the gourmet pastries made daily on site, to the allure of the subdued wine cellar, to the rich and delicious entrees and desserts, Le Bonaparte's stature far exceeds the little emperor's reputation.
The northernmost medieval stone fortress anywhere in the world still standing, Olavinlinna (St Olaf's Castle) is a 15th Century three-tower castle located in Savonlinna, Finland. It is built on an island in the Kyrönsalmi strait that connects the lakes Haukivesi and Pihlajavesi.
The fortress was founded by Erik Axelsson Tott in 1475 under the name Sankt Olofsborg in an effort to profit from the political turmoil following Ivan III's conquest of the Novgorod Republic. It was sited in Savonia so as to lay claim to the Russian side of the border established by the Treaty of Nöteborg.
One of Tott's letters from 1477 includes a passing mention of foreign builders invited to Olofsborg, probably from Reval, where the city fortifications were being extended. It was the first Swedish castle provided with a set of thickset circular towers that could withstand cannon fire. It is not by accident that a network of lakes and waterways forms the setting for the castle, for these would seriously impede a prospective Russian offensive.
The three-towered keep was completed in 1485, and the construction of the outer curtain walls with two towers was initiated immediately. They were completed in 1495. The castle is roughly a truncated rhomboid with keep on the western side of the island and the curtain walls and outer bailey to east. One of the towers of the keep, St. Erik's Tower, has a bad foundation and has since collapsed. One of the towers of Bailey, the Thick Tower, exploded in the 18th century. A bastion has been built on its place. The castle was converted into a Vaubanesque fort in the late 18th century with bastions.
Olofsborg withstood several sieges by the Russians during the First and Second Russian-Swedish wars. A brisk trade developed under the umbrella of the castle towards the end of the 16th century, giving birth to the town of Savonlinna, which was chartered in 1639.
While the castle was never captured by force, its garrison agreed to terms of surrender twice; first to invading Russians on 28 July 1714 and the second time on 8 August 1743, with the latter conflict's peace treaty in form of the Treaty of Åbo leading to the castle and the entire region being seceded to Empress Elizabeth of Russia. During the Russian era Alexander Suvorov personally inspected rearmament of the fortress.
Several devastating fires destroyed much of the castle's decor in the 19th century, all of its original furnishings were destroyed
Nowadays, the castle hosts several small exhibitions, including the Castle Museum which displays artifacts found in the castle or related to it, and the Orthodox Museum which displays icons and other religious artifacts both from Finland and Russia. Since 1912, it has formed a spectacular stage for the Savonlinna Opera Festival.
This description incorporates text from the English Wikipedia.
Travelled up to Salisbury today to revisit the wonderful cathedral. It has the tallest spire in the United Kingdom. I climbed to the top of the spire last time I visited back in 2014. The tower is not open at the moment due to Covid-19 rules on social distancing. Salisbury cathedral is one of our newer Norman cathedrals as it was not built until 1220AD. Sadly the weather today as you can see was cloudy and overcast.