Author: Grubb

It was starting to rain when we left the abruptly curtailed medieval bridge after visiting the Palace of the Popes.  So we quickly angled down a couple of side streets and found the Angladon Museum Jacques-Doucet.  Taking up a couple floors of an old chateau, the museum has a collection of art that was acquired by Jacques-Doucet,…

For most of the 14th century the Catholic papacy took up residence in Avignon.  This all had to do with French king Philip IV getting in a deadly spat with Pope Boniface VIII.  While Rome was in bickering chaos, Philip was bent on centralizing the church.  The next seven popes made Avignon their base where Benedict VII built…

Château des Baux was a monument to carving a fortress out of granite.  Down the steps past the village and up the road was the former granite quarry.  Now it is an immense cavern with a sandy floor and large stone columns dedicated to themed light shows.   As we entered, the underground cathedral of light was immersively…

I’ve come face-to-face with this Egyptian god of the underworld and protector of graves.  He has the body of a man with a canine head, so even from a distance he’s hard to miss.   I first ran into him while moiling through the Louvre.  I was trying to skirt the crowd and there he was right in…

How can one not love a penguin or a flamingo?  The penguin for waddling in a tux, the flamingo for its stately pose in pink finery.  It’s only fitting that we made our journey to the gathering of the flamingos in France.  Their upright stillness, the long graceful loop of their necks as they dip their beaks in…

The Saint-Trophime Catholic Church holds a prominent corner of the large square in the center of Arles that once was the Roman forum.  It was first constructed in the 12th century.   It was built in the Romanesque tradition as you can tell from the pillars fronting the entrance.  When it comes to medieval churches, I prefer Gothic…

This shot of colorful boat-shaped tables outside a seaside cafe in Menton had me recall tables we had come across near an outdoor museum kiosk a few days earlier.   The museum kiosk had, unbeknownst to me, a hierarchy of tables.  I thought we could sit down and have a cup of coffee, but was quickly informed…

I forgot to mention that in the midst of our Arles rain walk we took a brief tour of the cryptoporticus, a “semi-subterranean gallery whose vaulting supports portico structures aboveground” such as the forum which served as the Roman marketplace of the city. No one is quite sure went on down there during Roman rule,…

Arles, two-thousand years ago was an important Roman city.  It still has the ruins of a coliseum that used to be able to seat ten thousand people.  Up the cobbled street from where we’re staying, we paid it a mid-morning visit.   Now bullfights take place in the arena.  From what I’ve read they have a benign variation on…