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<blockquote data-quote="Blue439" data-source="post: 825729" data-attributes="member: 53455"><p>In 2022, I was driving on small, lazy back-country road in the clear light of a June morning in the province of Aquitaine (southwestern France) when I happened, purely by chance, upon this wonderful early Romanesque church built on a hilltop in the middle of nowhere, a few kilometers from the village of Curemonte.</p><p></p><p>Dedicated to Saint Hilaire (Hillary), this Year 1000 church is referred to as an <em>église-mère</em> (“Mother church”), which is an old way of saying that it was the first church ever built in the area. In fact, archæological research has shown that it is built upon another type of building, possibly a very early Christian baptistry built around the 4th or 5th century, when the region was christianized, or even a Pagan temple of some kind from Gallo-Roman times.</p><p></p><p>My assessment as an amateur art historian is that the original apse, the three-sided one on the left, is clearly pre-Year 1000 (Carolingian, I would say), while the second, semi-circular one on the right is Romanesque from the early 1000s. It was obviously built later to accommodate a growing congregation.</p><p></p><p>The walled enclosure behind the church used to be a cemetery, but as I think I mentioned before, most of those cemeteries were decommissioned from the 1870s for public health reasons .</p><p></p><p>Nikon Z7 II, Nikkor 19mm, ƒ/4 PC-E tilt-shift lens. Gitzo tripod, Benro geared head.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]411844[/ATTACH]</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Blue439, post: 825729, member: 53455"] In 2022, I was driving on small, lazy back-country road in the clear light of a June morning in the province of Aquitaine (southwestern France) when I happened, purely by chance, upon this wonderful early Romanesque church built on a hilltop in the middle of nowhere, a few kilometers from the village of Curemonte. Dedicated to Saint Hilaire (Hillary), this Year 1000 church is referred to as an [I]église-mère[/I] (“Mother church”), which is an old way of saying that it was the first church ever built in the area. In fact, archæological research has shown that it is built upon another type of building, possibly a very early Christian baptistry built around the 4th or 5th century, when the region was christianized, or even a Pagan temple of some kind from Gallo-Roman times. My assessment as an amateur art historian is that the original apse, the three-sided one on the left, is clearly pre-Year 1000 (Carolingian, I would say), while the second, semi-circular one on the right is Romanesque from the early 1000s. It was obviously built later to accommodate a growing congregation. The walled enclosure behind the church used to be a cemetery, but as I think I mentioned before, most of those cemeteries were decommissioned from the 1870s for public health reasons . Nikon Z7 II, Nikkor 19mm, ƒ/4 PC-E tilt-shift lens. Gitzo tripod, Benro geared head. [ATTACH type="full" alt="52210793556_348ecfdb6d_o.jpg"]411844[/ATTACH] [/QUOTE]
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