Patrimoine weekend

Journees Europeenne du Patrimoine (European Heritage Days) is an annual event that occurs on different weekends in various European countries. Basically, it's a history event, but what it means in practice is that certain houses, public buildings, and churches are open to the public with special historical displays and events. This includes many places that are not normally open or easily accessible. The events and tours are all free but many of them require reservations for definite timeslots. Clay worked his magic on the website and got us signed up for multiple events each day.

The first walking tour on Saturday he did alone because I was out with Bailey on her usual morning walk. It was a walking tour around Vieux Lille focused on statues in niches on buildings around town. Lille was once home to about a dozen religious orders (all catholic, of course), so many of the building were part of those orders and had the obligatory statue of Mary or that order's relevant saint. I was sorry to miss that tour but it ran long anyway and even Clay had to bail on it early to meet me at the next event, which was a tour of the Bank of France. We've been by this building many times but didn't know much about it. Built by a count as his residence, it was eventually purchased by the Bank of France along with two adjacent properties. The Bank of France is the central bank of France, much like the Federal Reserve Bank in the U.S. It is responsible for printing the EU currency among other things, but it's role in setting monetary policy is now shared with the central banks of other EU countries. Interesting tour and an impressive structure.

Apparently there were other brass cherubs on the staircase at one time but they were looted by the Germans.

I liked all the dogs in the stained glass.

On the square in front of the opera house there were tents set up by different artisans and craftsmen, demonstrating their functional heritage. They included brass casting (making bells), metal work, lace making, stone masons, stained glass making, and building construction.

The opera house itself was having an open house but we've been there many times so we just walked through. The Theatre du Nord (Theater of the North) was giving backstage tours and talks about their operation and we took in one of those. We have tickets to see a couple of upcoming plays.

The theater is both a school and a professional company, putting on about 20 productions every year.

There is a small, black box theater in the basement.

Later Saturday afternoon we went to St. Catherine's church for a concert by a quartet composed of musicians from the Lille symphony. The three violins and one cello produced more sound than I would have expected thanks to the excellent acoustics of the building and we really enjoyed it.

There is a lot of serious artwork in St. Catherine's still, but this is a reproduction of a painting by Rubens. The original hung here until the 1990s. It is now in the Beaux Arts Museum in Lille, where I'm sure it is safer and kept under better conditions.

Saturday evening we went to another concert at the protestant temple in Lille. The Protestant Reformation never really took hold in France; catholicism has always been the dominant religion. It has faded in importance, thankfully without being replaced by another mythology. The protestant temple was built by the city to accommodate protestants who were displaced at the end of the Franco-Prussian war in the 1870s when the Alsace region became part of Germany. A Jewish temple was later constructed across the street for similar reasons. The concert featured a small organ and was preceded by a talk by the organ maker. The church itself was very plain and reminded me of colonial churches in the U.S.

We spotted this walking home after the organ concert. The better graffiti in Lille is a painted on very thin paper that is then applied to the side of a building. It can be removed without needing to be painted over.

I don't think we need to guess which country this piece refers to. The small black figures are surfers and shark fins.

The first event on Sunday was a tour of a section of old canals in Lille. This area was originally largely marshland and the original building were constructed on the few sites that set slightly above the water line. Canals ran throughout the town but over time they became polluted and gradually silted in. Because they also became less necessary and relevant to commerce, the decision was made that they were to be filled in rather than dredged to maintain them. A few still remain and underground remnants remain of others, including this one we visited on Sunday.

The next tour was of the crypt at the cathedral. I was excited about this because church crypts are always creepy and interesting places. This one was not. This cathedral is relatively modern construction and there are only two actual burials down there. It's a large, well-lit, empty space. If they had any sense they would open it as a beer hall, or at least as a coffee shop as was done with St. Martins-in-the-Fields in London. Glad to have seen it once, no need to go back.

Beautiful space, badly under utilized except for some display cases with photographs.

Our next stop was another church, St. Andre, which is mostly notable as being the church where Charles de Gaulle was baptized, on the day he was born, just down the street from his grandmother's house where he was born. There was nothing special happening there, but the church was open (it isn't normally) and we had never seen it. They also have some impressive artwork.

Our next tour was the former Lille General Hospital. It was large and imposing, but probably never very attractive. It had been built originally in 1730 to get orphaned children off the streets. It later transitioned to elder care, up until the 1980s. A business school has taken over part of it now and they are still looking for something to come in and rehab the back half of the building. I expect it was better than life on the streets, but it has the appearance of a Dickensian workhouse.

Our final visit on Sunday was the Residence Porte de Gand. It is now a retirement home, and it looks be quite a nice one, but it started out as the home of a religious order (Sisters of Mount Carmel). That one died out and then the French revolution happened, but another religious group (Daughters of the Baby Jesus) took it up as their home and later accepted nuns from many different orders as they all reached retirement age and their numbers dwindled. Two remarkable things: First, the chapel is still intact and is quite beautiful. Second, there are apparently a couple hundred dead nuns entombed in the basement. (That information was imparted but the basement was not part of the tour.) Preserving the remains in situ was apparently made a part of the deal when the city took over the operation of the home.