The pride not only of Šariš, but also of the whole of Slovakia is the ancient town of BARDEJOV, which is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful Slovak towns. It was included in the UNESCO World Natural and Cultural Heritage List in 2000. Bardejov has also a fitting nickname – “the most gothic town in Slovakia”.
The picturesque square with colorful burgher houses, the majestic Basilica Minor of St. Egidius, the Jewish suburb, the historic town hall, the Executioner's House, well-preserved city walls with bastions ... A huge number of valuable and remarkable monuments in a relatively small area. The city center is formed by the Town Hall Square surrounded on three sides by 46 burgher houses on narrow medieval plots. In the middle stands the Basilica Minor of St. Egidius, in front of which is located the original pair of bells Ján and Urban. The bells were originally placed in the bell tower of the Basilica’s tower. The old bells got damaged over time, so they were replaced by new castings. The Basilica of St. Egidius was built in the middle of the 14th century and contains a unique collection of 11 late Gothic winged altars. Feeling like climbing a flight of stairs? The tower of the basilica offers the most beautiful views of the city.
Tags: Bardejov Middle_ages UNESCO square Slovakia noctural architecture Slovensko námestie kat noc Church of St Egidius radnica townhall InternationalFlickrAwards
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Fbaz et land - A ; B ; B1 ; C ; D ; E
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FrameIt 16L1 12L2 15L3
GoldStar L56
BuildRainbow L5
Extraordinaire 5L1 L2
LittleBitSoap 7L1
MMW 9L1 7L2 4L3
Great Photographers
18 03 : 12 Prestige Photography
Tags: Alpes Dolomites Italie montagne nature
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This series will be the last of my uploads for the trip I took to southern Burgundy in September 2023.
Listed as a Historic landmark in 1900, the Romanesque church in the out-of-the-way village of Gourdon is one of the secret wonders of Burgundy. Not particularly outstanding from the outside, its large silhouette nevertheless foreshadows an impressive interior, and indeed it is, with its combination of a whooping three-level, Cluny-inspired elevation, its three naves and its generalized system of groin vaulting. Its collection of sculpted capitals is also famous, as are the alfresco paintings that were discovered in the 1940s as the plastering that was applied to hide them in the 19th century began to peel away. More such discoveries were made in the 1970s and restoration lasted until the early 1990s.
Located on a hilltop in the département of Saône-et-Loire, Gourdon has been inhabited since time immemorial. Valuable traces of Roman presence were found in 1845 and promptly shipped to a museum in Paris (the Cabinet des Médailles) where the are still being exhibited to this day. A monastery was founded here very early on, as there is a written trace of a dependency of the Le Puy cathedral chapter in 534, but claims that it was “a Benedictine priory” seem to me a bit overambitious, in spite of my sympathies for that order: let’s not forget that Saint Benedict died only in 547 in Monte Cassino, and I doubt that his Rule was so well-known in Gaul in his own lifetime that it could have been adopted by a small religious establishment in Burgundy... The monastery did certainly exist, though, as Saint Gregory of Tours visited it in 570 and there met with Didier (or Desideratus). About this last figure, History hesitates between the quality of abbot (that would indeed rather be prior if Gourdon were a priory back then) and that of hermit. In any case, by 1104, when the completed parish church is mentioned (there remains no trace of the in-between period), there is no further mention of that monastery, which must have disappeared in the meantime; it was probably little more than a hermitage, as by Year 1000 the rule had been largely propagated by Saint Benedict of Aniane († 821) and Benedictine houses were flourishing all over the Western world. An already existing priory would most likely never have been so abandoned and shut down. No physical traces of that establishment were ever found by archæologists.
Since around 1100, the church has been left almost intact, except for the bell tower which collapsed in 1881 and was rebuilt in 1889, exactly as it was before.
The apse and the lovely alfresco paintings.
Tags: France Saône-et-Loire Bourgogne Burgundy Gourdon Notre-Dame de l'Assomption vieilles pierres Monument historique Historic Landmark Medieval médiéval Moyen Âge moyenâgeux Middle Ages Nikon Nikkor tripod trépied Gitzo GT2530 Benro GD3WH tête micrométrique geared head Z7 II église church mirrorless old stones tilt shift bascule décentrement roman romane Romanesque parish church paroissiale église paroissiale parochial church 19mm f/4 PC-E
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This series will be the last of my uploads for the trip I took to southern Burgundy in September 2023.
Listed as a Historic landmark in 1900, the Romanesque church in the out-of-the-way village of Gourdon is one of the secret wonders of Burgundy. Not particularly outstanding from the outside, its large silhouette nevertheless foreshadows an impressive interior, and indeed it is, with its combination of a whooping three-level, Cluny-inspired elevation, its three naves and its generalized system of groin vaulting. Its collection of sculpted capitals is also famous, as are the alfresco paintings that were discovered in the 1940s as the plastering that was applied to hide them in the 19th century began to peel away. More such discoveries were made in the 1970s and restoration lasted until the early 1990s.
Located on a hilltop in the département of Saône-et-Loire, Gourdon has been inhabited since time immemorial. Valuable traces of Roman presence were found in 1845 and promptly shipped to a museum in Paris (the Cabinet des Médailles) where the are still being exhibited to this day. A monastery was founded here very early on, as there is a written trace of a dependency of the Le Puy cathedral chapter in 534, but claims that it was “a Benedictine priory” seem to me a bit overambitious, in spite of my sympathies for that order: let’s not forget that Saint Benedict died only in 547 in Monte Cassino, and I doubt that his Rule was so well-known in Gaul in his own lifetime that it could have been adopted by a small religious establishment in Burgundy... The monastery did certainly exist, though, as Saint Gregory of Tours visited it in 570 and there met with Didier (or Desideratus). About this last figure, History hesitates between the quality of abbot (that would indeed rather be prior if Gourdon were a priory back then) and that of hermit. In any case, by 1104, when the completed parish church is mentioned (there remains no trace of the in-between period), there is no further mention of that monastery, which must have disappeared in the meantime; it was probably little more than a hermitage, as by Year 1000 the rule had been largely propagated by Saint Benedict of Aniane († 821) and Benedictine houses were flourishing all over the Western world. An already existing priory would most likely never have been so abandoned and shut down. No physical traces of that establishment were ever found by archæologists.
Since around 1100, the church has been left almost intact, except for the bell tower which collapsed in 1881 and was rebuilt in 1889, exactly as it was before.
The church in Gourdon does have that “special light” that I often find in Romanesque churches. Such a lovely ambiance for Christmas time...!
Tags: France Saône-et-Loire Bourgogne Burgundy Gourdon Notre-Dame de l'Assomption vieilles pierres Monument historique Historic Landmark Medieval médiéval Moyen Âge moyenâgeux Middle Ages Nikon Nikkor tripod trépied Gitzo GT2530 Benro GD3WH tête micrométrique geared head Z7 II église church mirrorless old stones tilt shift bascule décentrement roman romane Romanesque parish church paroissiale église paroissiale parochial church Micro-Nikkor 85mm f/2.8 PC-E
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Restes du Vieux Pont, construit au XIème siècle, presque totalement détruit par une crue du Tarn en 1758. N'en subsistent que deux arches et le moulin.
Millau, France.
Tags: pont mill moulin bridge
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