Toulouse Cathedral

Otherwise known as Cathédrale Saint-Étienne de Toulouse. What more can I say about this monstrosity. If it were a person it would be called Quasimodo. It was started sometime around the 13th centruy, and then various setbacks occured, such as the death of its architect and lack of funds for completion, and it was still being completed as recently as the last century. I think officially it is two almost complete churches bolted together, but three are pretty obviously there at least in large part. The rose window is in one structure, the clock tower is another, and the third, a gothic design, which can't really be seen from the front is to the sides and forms the majority.


It is very scary to look at and shows how art has the power to stir emotion. I think picasso would be proud of it anyway. Inside the problem gets worse, although they have managed to distract from it here with an abundance of classic religious art, and many other fineries, such as wood carvings, sculptures, dozens of satellite chapels etc. The main problem seems to be that the two main structures do not line up and do not even cross in an orthodox manner. There is a huge central column inside which is supposed to rectify these shortcomings, but which just looks out of place like nothing I've ever seen in a building like this.


It's quite interesting to see how other project types than software can go badly wrong and yet the powers that be will simply keep driving the death march to its inevitable conclusion. I'm pretty sure they would have just kept throwing bodies at the problem in exactly the same manner, until at the very least it had a roof, and they could crack a bottle of champagne against that central pillar. Eventually the project would have been in such a mess that they would have got contractors in and that's perhaps why the money kept running out...hmm...


I feel kind of sorry for the old dear, and it is after all Toulouse Cathedral, so it certainly pulls rank over St Sernin, which is much more classically beautiful. Above all though, when I step into a building like this, it always fills me with awe that men could even contemplate building such structures without JCBs, dynamite and power tools, especially given its start date, though I'm pretty sure the body count would have been high. We're lucky in the UK to have so many post Norman specimens about...