Walking the Camino de Santiago
The city of Le Puy-en-Velay and its surrounding towns and villages are built inside a long extinct volcanic caldera. After millions of years of weathering and erosion, you get some interesting terrain features, including this granite spire, atop of which is built the church of Saint Michel d’Aiguilhe – literally “Saint Michael of the needle”. Construction of this church, dedicated […]
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And here’s what it looks like from the outside. This is the west façade of Le Puy Cathedral. It was originally built in the 12th century and reinforced several times over the centuries. In the mid 19th century, the entire structure was disassembled and carefully rebuilt with new interior buttressing and supports. From here, I walked down into the “downtown” […]
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This is one of my favourite photos from any of my pilgrimages – the view out of the main entrance of Le Puy Cathedral. You can see the town below, practically glowing in the sunlight. The street that proceeds from the Cathedral entrance down the hill is also the beginning of the route of the Via Podiensis that only ends […]
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These beautiful medieval frescoes in Le Puy Cathedral were defaced – literally – while the building was occupied by the forces of the Revolution in the late 18th century. When the cathedral was restored, these were deliberately left as they were, I think both as a remembrance and a warning to future generations. Date: 17 August 2023 Place: Le Puy-en-Velay, […]
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Unfortunately, I don’t know the name of this bishop, buried here in his cathedral in Le Puy. You see these sculpted tombs in churches throughout Europe, particularly in cathedrals. Sometimes they are of prominent churchmen, as here, but just as often they are nobles or wealthy merchants. I find them fascinating, as this is the closest we’ll come in this […]
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Here you can see pilgrims wandering the nave of the cathedral in Le Puy-en-Velay. They are no doubt early for the daily pilgrim Mass and sendoff, which begins in a couple of hours. The cathedral was constructed and re-constructed from the fifth through the fifteenth centuries, though most of what we see dates to the 12th century. It was badly […]
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The cathedral in Le Puy-en-Velay has several striking statues, but this is perhaps my favourite. It was only the first of many statues of Saint Jeanne d’Arc I would see in France. In some regions, she is in every village church. Date: 17 August 2023Place: Le Puy-en-Velay, Haute-Loire Département, Region of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France Maps!
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She sits above the cathedral’s high altar, as she has done for more than fifteen hundred years. The original Black Virgin of Le Puy, carved of ebony and thought variously to date back to anywhere between the third and sixth centuries, was looted and then burned by the revolutionaries in 1794. As it was burning, a hidden drawer popped open […]
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Okay, technically he’s known as Saint Jacques in France. This statue faces the cathedral’s apse, and so greets the pilgrim as they come into the church from the side entrance. There’s a lovely little sign near it in French and English inviting visitors to write their prayer petitions on small pieces of paper provided, and pilgrims will carry their petitions […]
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The main entrance to Le Puy Cathedral is actually a little tricky to find from the seminary as there are a lot of connected buildings in the way. Fortunately, there’s this door – the first one they actually open in the morning. It’s at the end of short winding street and perhaps a two minute walk from the seminary. If […]
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