NORMANDY 

Rouen-Saint Maclou-Aitre Saint Maclou

History and WWII

Cathedral

Gros Horloge and Place Vieux Marché

Palais de Justice Bourgtheroulde

St.Maclou-Aitre St.Maclou

Church Saint Ouen-Musée des Antiquités

Tour Jeanne-Musée Secq des Tournelles-musee des Beaux Arts

Musée de Faience-Musée Flaubert

It is an immense delight to come on SAINT-MACLOU (open 10.00-12.00, 14.00-18.00 in the week, 15.00-17.30 Sunday and festive days), opposite the Archbishop’s palace on the far side of the rue de la Republique. Late gothic, end 15th flamboyant architecture at his best! And with a unique uniform style since the church was built in a rather quick tempo (about ten years). The church gives such a formidable impression of airiness and grace that I stood and watched for long minutes!
I have seen many but it is for me one of the finest pure gothic edifices in France. Damaged during last war it was restored and entirely renovated. Large porch with five great arches, superb Renaissance folding doors and gables carried up against flying buttresses “crowned by fretted niches and fair pediment—meshed like gossamer with inextricable tracery”. You think I made up this perfect English text? No way, it’s from the English critic John Ruskin. 

Dining near St.Maclou

Anyway the round façade adds to the homogeneity of the building. Medallions representing the Good Pastor and two other medallions with the circumcision and baptism of Christ. Absolutely remarkable. Raise your head: somewhere in the forest of pinnacles are two oil jars in stone. The 6th century saint to whom the church was dedicated was a Scotsman who seems to have been canny enough to win the concession to supply holy oil to the diocese. Clever boy! Inside, a magnificent organ of 1521 with delicate Renaissance wainscoting  (summer concerts) and an elegant sculpted spiral staircase of the 16th century.The rue Martainville on the left of Saint-Maclou is anattractive half-timberedstreet of old print and book shops which hides a ghost train funfair ride of indescribable horror: the AITRE SAINT-MACLOU.

Ecole Beaux-Arts

Enter its passage and push open the door. There is a quadrangle surrounded by two-storied buildings being the studios of the “Ecole Regionale des Beaux-Arts”. Look at the carved wooden frieze above the ground floor on the timberwork gallery. Gruesome paraphernalia of death are there, skulls, coffins, crossbones, numerous macabre figures that give us a clue what this used to be:
a former cemetery and ossuary of the Black plague epidemics, a plague pit with bones heaped in the centre. The ossuary was at the first floor. The pillars are all decorated with very sympathetic and rhythmic sculptures representing figures of crossed shinbones, shovels digging a tomb, axes to dissect the dead bodies, crosses…amazing!Rouen’s victims of the Black Death, who are believed to have numbered 100,000 in the 14th century alone, must be buried here. I figure that the students of the Art School must be inspired by this very peculiar place J. There are often very interesting contemporary art exhibitions.

Bibliography

A holiday history of France, by Ronald Hamilton (London-Hogarth press), Region Normandie, ses merveilles, ses cicatrices, by Louis Letellier (ed. Cloison, Rouen 1995), Routard 1998 (Hachette, Paris), Rouen, ville martyr, by Patrick Deware (Ed. Dargelle, 1998)-France today, by John Ardagh (Secker and Warburgh, London)The Identity of Normandy, by Fernand Braudel (Fontana Press, London)