English Churches and Cathedrals Index

Welcome to this series of articles about religious buildings in England and the UK. These include Churches, Abbeys, Priories, Cathedrals, Basilicas, Duomos, Chapels, Mosques, in fact anything that is relevant to any religion or belief system.

A separate index will cover sites in Europe and the rest of the world whilst any prehistoric sites which may be wholly or partly religious in nature (e.g. Stonehenge) will fall under the relevant Curiosities Index. Sites here are listed in order of the alphabetical name of the town or city in which the site is to be found.

Clicking or tapping the photos below will take you to each of the articles. A link on each page will bring you back here.

Florence Duomo

Florence is an Italian city full of works of art. Michaelangelo's statue of David is just one of many statues to be seen here, though the original is now indoors in a museum whilst a replica stands outside. The city's cathedral or basilica is Il Duomo Officially, the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore (...of Saint Mary of the Flowers).

This is the impressive facade of Il Duomo. It has one of the most impressive domes of the medieval world. A church was first consecrated here by St Ambrose of Milan in the year 393 CE. This ancient structure, added to, damaged and repaired no doubt several times, needed replacing entirely by the late 1200s. Building commenced on September 9 1296 and was to last another 170 years, interrupted or set back at times by earthquakes, various project managers growing old and dying and a small matter called the Black Death in 1348.

The facade is relatively new. Almost all of Florence seems to be constructed of white, green and red marble and the present facade was added only in 1876/87.

The original facade had never been finished, never having gotten above the lower portion of the basilica and by the Renaissance was very old-fashioned in appearance. It was pulled down in 1587-88 and the front of the basilica remained bare for the next 300 years.

Some say it is excessively decorated. We just thought it was excessively dirty. It was in dire need of a good wash and brush up.

The guide took an incredible 3/4 hours to tell us all this, adding many names and dates that meant absolutely nothing to me and, to judge from the intense boredom on the face of our fellow travellers, to no one else either. If you were a scholar of Italian artists and architects it may have been interesting...

We were, however, stuck in the queue to go in! Whilst outside we caught a glimpse of the dome. This is on an octagonal supporting tower and was an architectural marvel for its time. The laws of Florence forbade the use of any external buttresses simply because their enemies in central Italy used them as an architectural tool. A bit like an army refusing to use guns because that's what their enemy was using... Instead it had to be supported from the inside with an eight-sided rail of concrete with a chain embedded. At least that was the idea - magnetic examination has failed to find any evidence of the chain. Either it doesn't exist or it is buried very deep within the concrete.

Once inside we could see up into the interior of the dome. The figures were painted elongated so that they appear in the correct perspective when viewed from below. It doesn't look that big from below but it's a long way up to it! In fact the painting covers a massive 3600 square metres and took 11 years to complete. The original artist Giorgio Vasari started in 1568 and then selfishly died in 1574, leaving Federico Zuccari and a few friends to finish it off.

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Rattenburg and Glassmakers

Wednesday 30 January 2002. After lunch at Fügen, we get back onto the coach and are taken to the town of Rattenburg. We are here to visit a glass factory and I have to admit that I have never seen so many crystal glass shops so close together in my entire life!

A street with a Kodak sign! I've started to take photos of these whenever I see one, because I have a feeling that they will soon become just a memory as digital cameras take over.

A few buildings in the town had an air of being slightly dilapidated, though I suppose buildings with smooth painted walls will soon start to look dirty. And if you looked out for the exceptions there were some wonderful sculptures and painted designs on some buildings.

Fran had started walking back down the main street but Sheila was shouting for me to explore the little alley leading to the white church.

She wanted me to see this wonderful cafe with the walkways between the upper storeys. This was easily the most spectacular building in the town.

In fact there were almost as many architectural features on this one building as in the rest of the town put together!

We had a rather swift demonstration of glass working in this shop before they dismissed us to spend money... That's a bit how it felt - so most folk treated the invitation to browse with the same amount of interest that the shop people had put into the demonstration.

There were so many glass shops that I wondered how they all managed to make any money! It made it all the more amazing that they hadn't put much effort into making us feel welcomed, rather than getting the "demonstration" over and done with as fast as possible in order to separate us from money. There was also a geology shop with crystals and fossils.

And at the end of town as we walked back towards the waiting coach - ta-dah! - the only ivy-covered building I remember seeing during the entire week.

Return to Austria Winter Holiday 2002 Index

Innsbruck

Monday 11 August 2003. Today's excursion is to the city of Innsbruck. It's our first time there and there's plenty to see.

This is the famous golden roof. The Goldenes Dachl as it is known locally. The bay window and the roof are a late addition (c1500) to an already existing building from the early 1400s. It was added by Emperor Maximilian to commemorate his wedding to Bianca Maria Sforza - and also in an attempt to scotch the rumours that he was somewhat skint... The roof was tiled with 2,657 fire-gilded copper shingles, though apparently most of them were taken down and replaced by copies in the early 1900s. Six of the original tiles are displayed in the museum inside.

On an adjacent corner to the Golden Roof is the Helblinghaus, known as the Wedding Cake House for obvious reasons - yes it's currant...! (Please don't write in because of that - I kan spel...) Once again the building pre-dates it's famous decoration. Variously described as built originally as town houses or as the town hall (and possibly the confusion is simply in the translation from Austrian) the building once again dates from the 1400s and the the decoration in this case from the early eighteenth century, being completed in 1732. The name though according to the Innsbruck guidebook is for Sebastian Helbling, who owned the building from 1800 to 1827.

But enough of this frivolity... Mum has found the Swarovski crystal shop so we went in to have a laugh at the prices. We had been given some discount tickets and they are burning a hole in her purse. The price of one of these chandeliers would have also burned a hole in Dad's pocket, bank balance and possibly the Bank of England as well...

And so we hit the streets and the sun comes out. Mum, never the one for meaningless elegance, has forgotten her suntan lotion and instead of letting us attempt buying some in a foreign language, has tied a 1950s style flimsy headscarf around her shoulders believing it will do the trick. She believes this all the way until the following morning when she wakes up with mild sunstroke and elects to stay in bed...

We are heading from the Old Town towards the river, which is the River Inn, hence the name of the city. I didn't notice until Miss Franny pointed it out to me just after I took this, but the girl sitting eating her lunch on the wall has the most gigantic piece of pizza and is having to hold it in both hands whilst taking chomp-sized bites out of the edge!

We reach the river and take photos of every combination of three of us whilst the fourth takes the photo.

We came upon this. Mum said it was the Maximilian Arch. She was right too, where that came from I don't know... Maximilian (he of the Golden Roof fame) was King of the Romans and also became the Holy Roman Emperor in the 1500s. He had a magnificent tomb in the church here that we saw, but he is not buried in it. He was buried in Wiener Neustadt, south of Vienna, in accordance with his wishes, though the church there did not allow for a huge tomb. His grandson had a massive tomb built here in the centre of the nave with sarcophagus, statues and iron railings, but no body, so it serves more as a memorial or cenotaph.

We stop for a bit of refreshment - keeping hydrated was a must in the hot sun. There are lots of outdoor cafes in Austria, great in summer, a bit more chilly in winter perhaps... They are a good platform for watching life go on.

Apart from horse-drawn carriages, local transport includes a tramway system, some of the trams a cross between tramcar and train.

Return to Austrian Tyrol 2003 Index

Glorious Barcelona

Thursday 30 August 2007. The Island Star reaches Spain and Barcelona is our port of call today. On last year's cruise we opted to do a tour on mountain bikes. That's been well and truly crossed off the bucket list so we'll just hop off the ship and use our legs as nature intended today!

We wanted to see one of the famous Gaudi houses and after perusing the map, we head out confidently up Las Ramblas. If you look at Barcelona close up on Google Maps it is called "La Rambla", so why do we give it the plural form as though there were more than one? For the obvious reason actually - the street is a series of shorter streets, five in total: Rambla de Canaletes, Rambla dels Estudis, Rambla de les Flors (site of a flower market), Rambla dels Caputxins, and Rambla de Santa Mònica. We were warned to keep an eye out for pickpockets, but we saw no untoward behaviour at all.

Well... we did come across a few naked ladies in a park, but they were all stony-faced.

What a feast for the eyes Barcelona is if, like me, you love architecture and beautiful street furniture. Set the buildings against a deep blue sky and some stunning iron street lamp standards and I'm quite happy clicking away!

The sky was cloudless and I always have a polarising filter on my camera which makes the most of a blue sky. Look at the number of statues on this corner building. Even if finding the Gaudi building eludes us, I can't complain that the day has been a disaster!

But then, here it is anyway. This is Casa Batlló. There are virtually no horizontal straight lines whatsoever.

The Catalan artist and architect Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926) has works all over Barcelona, the most famous being the as yet unfinished cathedral La Sagrada Familia, the most-visited monument in all of Spain. Casa Batlló is known locally as the House of Bones as it does look a little as though some of the shaping has been modelled on various skeleton parts. It was built in 1877 and is just one of Gaudi's creations to be granted a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

It is an extremely hot morning. Gasping for a drink we make it back to the coast and find a stall selling fruit juice that is a very welcome sight on our way back towards the ship.

By the port, at the foot of Las Ramblas there is a statue of Christopher Colombus. He is portrayed as though pointing towards the New World, though actually he is pointing south south east, to somewhere in Algeria... Or perhaps, judging from the colour of his head, he is pointing accusingly at a pigeon...

Return to Mediterranean Explorer Cruise, 2007 Index

Ornate Street Lighting

I know I live in - well near these days - Blackpool but I'm ignoring illuminations and to be honest, the UK altogether for this entry. Having travelled around Europe quite a bit we have come across many examples of older or just simply decorative street lighting and it's become a habit to look out for them.

As most of our travels have been on cruise ships, we don't tend to see a lot of places at night, so most of these shots will be daytime. But that does make it easier to see detail on the lamp standards and finials. We'll start gently with this view of St Tropez.

Villefranche nestles between Nice on the French Riviera and Monaco. This street is named the Hidden Street and it runs parallel with the seafront and is totally enclosed. It is lit with what seem to be ancient housings containing more modern electric lights.

Housings that look as though they should be holding flaming pitch-covered lengths of wood or bundles of twigs always get my attention. This one is above a gateway into the ancient city of Rhodes.

Another year and back on the French Riviera; this is Sanary-sur-Mer. Wouldn't it be wonderful to sit on the Promenade and listen to a concert in this band stand with it's old-fashioned lighting?

We had just got off our ship in the harbour at Ajaccio, Corsica and this street lamp stood out against the deep of the blue sky.

Koper in Slovenia. I particularly enjoy looking around those medieval cities where many of the street lights are attached to buildings rather than lamp posts, because the streets are so narrow.

These lights are a touch more modern, but at least a bit of imagination has been applied to the design. They sit on the end of a pier at Limone on Lake Garda, Italy.

Lamp posts this time. This is Funchal on the island of Madeira out in the Canaries.

And another one in Valetta in Malta.

We went a long way to see this one. It's in Walt Disney's Magic Kingdom in Orlando. The flag was a clue wasn't it...?

The lamp standards in Venice have pink glass in their casings. Perhaps to make the most of the colours of the Doges' Palace?

Also in Venice, we found a dragon holding up a bunch of umbrellas! Well just the one wouldn't keep it dry...

The medieval city of Kotor in Montenegro has such narrow streets and nestles so close under the mountain that the light finds it hard to penetrate and the street lights were still glowing when we arrived one morning.

A lovely bit of decorative ironwork in Palermo, Sicily.

Piombino in Italy and a street that I just happened to glance down as we passed it.

For most things architectural it's hard to beat Spain's wonderful city of Barcelona. It's a city where your neck should be constantly stretching upwards to make sure you don't miss anything and for this article I'm going to finish with a second look at Barcelona's magnificent street lights below.

Curiosities - Buildings and Infrastructure Index