okie baroquie

When Paula and I visited Switzerland last month, our itinerary was suggested by my son Siegfried, who now lives there, and a major highlight of the week was a walk around the old town section of St. Gallen, a city east of Zurich. Naturally, I took a lot of photos, and what follows is a selection of what I consider the most interesting.

We had parked in a multi-storey car park, and almost immediately upon leaving this location I took the following photo, which shows a typical narrow street with a church in the distance:

Notice what I might describe as ‘bay windows’ on the upper floors on the right. Paula took this photo of part of the nearer example, which features some intricate carving:

The next photo is a view of the second ‘bay window’ (I imagine that there’s actually a formal architectural term for these features):

…followed by two close-ups of the structure:

Notice that the structure on the upper floor appears to be slightly misaligned, suggesting that it was added to the building at a different time.

This is a general view of the next street we walked along:

…and a slightly closer view of the church in the first photo:

Somewhere between the location of the two previous photos, Paula photographed these images, which I don’t remember seeing (too many other distractions):

When we finally reached the church, Paula took this photo:

…while I took this one:

I wasn’t able to ascertain the name of this church; nor were we able to go inside. And because of the closeness of nearby buildings, I couldn’t get far enough away to take a photo of the entire edifice, but it would certainly be worth taking a more detailed look on a subsequent visit.

Shortly after walking past this church, we emerged into an extensive open area. I don’t know for certain the nature of the surrounding buildings, but when I subsequently looked online, I found extensive references to an abbey, which once had an extremely large population of monks and still has a world-renowned mediæval library. The next three photos show the buildings surrounding the open area:

The imposing building on the left in the previous photo is the abbey’s former church, now the city’s cathedral (see below):

I took the last photo specifically because it shows the intricate pattern on the roof of the church I’ve been referencing above. And now for a closer look at the cathedral:

It struck me as quite odd that other buildings came right up to the cathedral on the left.

Paula took this photo of the side of the cathedral facing the open area:

…while these are mine, looking first straight on (this isn’t the main entrance!), then to the left:

I’ve just noticed the dormer windows set into the roof in the last photo, a feature that I’ve never seen before, so I can only speculate as to what they represent. If you have any positive information on the subject, please leave a comment. The previous photo also shows another feature that surprised me at first: a clock face looking back along the roof. But I should not have been surprised. Switzerland is a very clocky country, and even humble village chapels have clock faces on all four sides of their steeples.

I also took a photo looking to the right, but first a look inside the cathedral (we hadn’t expected to be able to go inside):

Although I’d never seen a Baroque church before, I recognized the style immediately (the present church on this site was built between 1755 and 1766, while the interior was renovated between 1962 and 1967).

You may be able to see what I think is a pulpit on the far pillar on the left. This is a closer view:

It never occurred to me to check the other side of the stone column to see whether there was a spiral staircase inside.

And this is the high altar area:

Even though Paula’s camera has a wider aspect ratio than mine, she couldn’t capture the entire panorama.

When we turned to leave and I looked down the nave, I noticed a splendid organ at the back of the church:

And this is the view to the right from the side of the cathedral, which I mentioned earlier:

You can see a mural on the building on the far side of the open area outside the main entrance to the cathedral. And this is a closer view:

I cannot state with any confidence what is being depicted here, although I do suspect that there is a religious motif running through what appear to be unrelated scenes.

And this is a closer look at the raised ‘bay window’, the top of which you can see in the previous photo:

Once again, the intricacy of the carving is absolutely stunning.

I took two photos of the buildings to the right of the mural, but I couldn’t decide which one to include here, so I’ve kept both:

Which do you prefer?

I took just two more photos as we made our way back to the car. I don’t know if the imagery in the next photo is what you can actually experience in the restaurant:

Unbelievably, this final image has been created by chiselling off some of the cement rendering on the wall of the building:

I’ve no idea what ‘Zur Lerche’ refers to (or means).

And that’s the old town of St. Gallen. The abbey/cathedral is a UNESCO world heritage site, and I’m sure there’s more to discover here, if I get the chance.