Vacation Days 5 & 6: Toulouse again

Photographically speaking, the end of my week in Toulouse was pretty calm. Well, not just photographically speaking, I guess. I wandered around the city, exploring the endless little, winding streets of the old city, walked along the Canal du Midi - a canal that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Mediterranean Sea - which flows through Toulouse, and continued to eat ice cream like I was on vacation or something...! (Favorite new combination of flavors: pear & caramel. Favorite I-can-never-pass-up-this-combo: raspberry & yogurt... mmmm!)

But I just want to take a moment here to take you on a tour of Basilique Saint-Sernin, the oldest surviving/standing romanesque church in Europe. Brief architecture / art history lesson (probably full of over-generalizations, but bear with me!):

Romanesque: older of the two styles; characterized by rounded (barrel) arches; rounded windows; thick, massive walls that aren't able to rise up very high; not really any flying buttresses (or built into attached building); consequence of rounded arches and shorter structures: not as much light (since windows weaken a structure) and therefore less spectacular stained glass (in churches)

Gothic: more recent of the two styles (but we're still talking 12th-16th centuries!); characterized by pointed (ogival) arches; pointed windows; thinner walls braced with flying buttresses that allow the structure to soar higher; result of braced walls and pointed arches is that window-space can be vastly increased and that's where we get some of the most beautiful and well-known stained glass work (Notre-Dame, the cathedrals of Chartres, Reims, Amiens, and Metz!)

bell tower

Basilique Saint-Sernin

the nave, with a beautiful example of barrel vaults

windows

arches

arches

façade