If it's Tuesday, This Must be Belgium - 10/7/08

I'm baaaackkkkk.  Okay, that was a bit melodramatic.  It's been a long day/week/month/year or whatever.  A bit of stress here...a bit of trauma there [may my Uncle Scrap rest in peace].  I think I need to go to church.  In fact, why don't we all go to church.  A bunch of them.  Yeh, and let's make them cathedrals and all...just for emphasis.

Andiamo alla cattedrale

[Which I hope means (in Italian) something like "Let's go to the cathedral." [Okay, I wanted to do Latin but for the life of me couldn't figure out a translation...and Italian is like Latin with a modern accent, right?!]]

Anyway, as you no doubt noticed, Europe has a lot of churches.  They also have a good number of Synagogues and Mosques, but they really (really) have a lot of churches.  Every little city or town seemed to have several near the main square (and they all had a main square).  Actually, now that I think about it, my home town of about 11,000 people had at least 25 different churches.  Needless to say there was a big European influence in my home town.

First stop is the biggie...Notre Dame in Paris.  We all know what this one looks like.

But did you know that there is also a Notre Dame in Brussels?  Not quite as impressive, but nice nonetheless.

I even have a little detail.

Another very well known cathedral is the one in Cologne, Germany (or Koln).  A bit dark and dreary, mainly because it was raining and I was trapped there (I missed the last train back to Brussels so had to spend the night).  But big.

Another big, traditional, gothic style cathedral was in Strasbourg, France.  Check out how this thing is squeezed into a tiny space in the houses.  I suspect it had more space at one time, with the city encroaching on its doorstep more each year.

As is the norm for gothic cathedrals, the carvings around the doorway are intricate and quite amazing.

Check this out

Erfurt, Germany had two churches side by side...a cathedral and a large, but more modest church

I actually liked how the triple spires on this one looked

Another big cathedral was in Freiburg, Germany.  I climbed up a fairly steep hill (on the way to the castle) for this shot.  It was pretty impressive even though they were working on the steeple (which was the case in several of the cathedrals I saw).

And the interior was beautiful

And now something completely different (to quote that great philosopher, Monty Python).  The Piazza del Popolo (Plaza of the People) in Rome has two churches mirroring each other.

And for the really different you have to go to Barcelona for the Sagrada Familia.  This is the "normal" side (the other side is the Gaudi side).  Of course, there are two other sides they still have to build, a 300+ year project.

Stuttgart, Germany had this rather normal looking church

While Prague, in the Czech Republic, had some of my favorite architecture.  This one was nice...

...but I really liked this church with an almost fairy tale quality to it.

Okay, I started in Paris (I think), so I'll end there.  A very different style than the gothic Notre Dame is the Agra-like Sacre Coeur on the hill in Montmartre.

That should do it for this episode of If it's Tuesday, This Must be Belgium.  Hope you enjoyed my little tour of cathedrals (okay, some were merely churches).  Lots more, but I need to scan some older photos.

Hope to see you all next week.