Tag: History
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Bleu de Chartres
Bleu de Chartres When you enter Chartres Cathedral, the blue light in the stained-glass windows immediately catches your eye: the famous blue of Chartres. There are many different colours in the stained glass, red, yellow, green, white … but it is the intensity of the blue that dominates the image. The photo shows a detail…
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Saenredam’s St. Bavo
Saenredam’s St. Bavo In the Rijksmuseum, the Getty Museum, the National Gallery in London or the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, you can come face to face with an interior of the Great St. Bavo Church in Haarlem painted by Pieter Jansz. Saenredam. He made at least 12 of them, each from a different…
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The St. Bavo organ
The St. Bavo organ In 1738, word must have spread like wildfire among organists and composers that Christian Müller had built one of the largest organs in the world for installation in the Grote St. Bavo Church in Haarlem. As early as 1740, Georg Friedrich Händel came to the city to play the Müller organ.…
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The Great St. Bavo
The Great St. Bavo The Great St. Bavo Church has stood in the old centre of Haarlem, just 20 km from Amsterdam, since 1520. Initially Catholic, it was taken over by the Calvinists in 1578 with some violence and accompanying destruction. The well-preserved Gothic building still serves as a Protestant church but is now mainly…
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Half-timbered
Half-timbered The beauty of asymmetry in the patterns of old half-timbered houses. Photo of the week: Half-timbered house (detail), Chamandre, Ain, France 2025
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La beauté a sa méthode
La beauté a sa méthode Each one in its own way: one of the oldest houses in Bourg-en-Bresse in the traditional style with stone, earth and wood construction elements, and the method of Jeanne Piaubert with its ‘unique treatment for divine skin and hair’. Photo of the week: La Demeure Hugon, Bourg-en-Bresse, France 2025
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Think again
Think again Second thoughts of a wall in Cluny: I don’t want windows here, I want them there. Or wait a minute, they will still be better over there. Photo of the week: Wall in Cluny, France 2025
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The Wallace fountain
The Wallace fountain For the last 150 years numerous of these free drinking water fountains can be found all over Paris. They are called Wallace fountains, named after the British philanthropist who made the initial design and financed them. They were further developed and sculpted by Charles-Auguste Lebourg, an artist from Nantes, where this specimen…
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Romanesque abbey
Romanesque abbey For over a thousand years the simple brick columns and beautiful light inside the romanesque abbey church in Tournus has impressed the people. The abbey was rebuilt in the 11th century after the original one was destroyed by the Magyars in 937. Photos of the week: Abbaye Saint-Philibert de Tournus, France 2024
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Hotel of God
Hotel of God The Hôtel-Dieu of Beaune (Hospices de Beaune) dates from the middle of the 15th century. It was run by the same nuns as the one in Louhans, the order of Sainte-Marthe. We see them here in the kitchen in Beaune, while on the other photo we look from the kitchen in Louhans…
καιρός remembered 