A stupendous Romanesque church... ignored by all ! (2021)
Saint-Paulien in Auvergne (central France) is a place with about 2,400 inhabitants. Larger than a village, smaller than a town, there is a word in French for this kind of in-between locale: a
bourg.
Bourgs almost always have a church, as they were, for times immemorial, the place where the seat of the parish was located, but those churches, which may occasionally be very old and extremely lovely to behold and visit, are proportionate to the size of the congregation and its financial means: relatively small (excluding borderline cases like, say, priory churches founded by a powerful abbey and doubling as the parochial place of worship).
In Saint-Paulien, the story is different. First, on the outside, the church is enormous. No monastery was ever involved in its construction and no one knows how come such a vast church was ever built, nor who had the financial means, not only to actually buy the materials, but to commission the genius architect and builders who brought it into existence. Dedicated to Saint George, it was built during the 1100s and most of it is typical Auvergnat Romanesque style.
It is when you step inside that you are likely to fall back onto your rear end out of amazement: this gigantic, cavernous, single-nave church is absolutely pillar-less and features an enormously heavy barrel vault of solid stone that spans a whopping 16 meters without any kind of support, along the whole length of the nave...!
There is not one single column to obstruct the view nor the elevation of the mind through meditation.
Cluny III, the largest church in all Christendom, only spanned 14 meters... Saint Peter's span in Rome is bigger but it was built during the Renaissance,
and it is segmented... Saint-Paulien is not.
This is a UNESCO-caliber achievement, yet you rarely see more than a couple of tourists around, and very often you have it all to yourself!
Nikon Z7, Nikkor 19mm, ƒ/4 PC-E tilt-shift lens, FTZ adapter. Gitzo tripod, Benro geared head. Natural light.
