St Peter's

[poliphilo]

St Peter's is an ugly building too. It has no poetry about it, no charm. What it's saying is, "This is the Pope's house and the Pope has loads of money." I'm coming to the slightly surprising conclusion that I don't much like marble- certainly not as a building material; it's too shiny; it has the arrogance to defy time. I prefer stone that weathers and crumbles and provides safe footing for lichen. Caen stone, that's the stuff!

I don't envy the Romans their buildings- well, maybe the Pantheon and some of those tombs along the Appian Way- but they can keep St Peter's and most of what's in it. I'd far rather have an English or French medieval cathedral- even a very small one- like Rochester.

Comments

[resonant.livejournal.com]

*googles Caen stone*

Interesting.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's such lovely stuff they imported it into England to build our cathedrals.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

And who am I to argue with that as a native of Rochester? :o)

The Caen stone still makes a home for a species of wallflower found nowhere else in the UK.

And I still think the west door is one of the finest I've seen anywhere, even in France, so there! :o)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The West door is lovely.

[puddleshark.livejournal.com]

No, I've never much cared for marble - shiny, clinical, echoing.

Crumbling weathered sandstone, with ferns growing in the cracks, that's the stuff...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It certainly is.

BTW I hate the modern fashion for marble headstones. They don't look right. English stone for English churchyards!

[puddleshark.livejournal.com]

No - shiny marble memorials always look out of place in small English churchyards.

I make an exception for Purbeck marble, our local stone, which isn't really marble anyway.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Purbeck marble belongs here. Italian marble doesn't.

While we're in Kent...

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Thou art not, PENSHURST, built to envious show
Of touch, or marble ; nor canst boast a row
Of polish'd pillars, or a roof of gold :
Thou hast no lantern whereof tales are told ;
Or stair, or courts ; but stand'st an ancient pile,
And these grudg'd at, art reverenced the while.

Re: While we're in Kent...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Last time I was at Penshurst they wanted to charge us a quite astonishing amount of money to go round it so we stayed outside and goggled at it over the spiked fence.

Re: While we're in Kent...

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Things have changed since Sidney's day - it's much the same at Wilton House.