Mining the Diaries 83: France
Couvent des Minimes Alliance, Lille, France, 22nd March 2012
Impressions of an amble round historic Lille.
The Vielle Bourse: The former building of the Lille Chamber of Commerce and Industry. A quadrangle with an inner courtyard, which is a casual meeting place for book and record sellers, florists and chess players.
St Maurice: Built over four centuries from the end to the 14th to the end of the 19th. A ‘forest of columns’; we lit candles and said a prayer.
Palais des Beaux-Arts: Not sure what to make of this. There are fine things there – Goya’s Les Vieilles and La Lettre d’Amour side by side, the Census at Bethlehem by Brueghel, Rubens’ Descent from the Cross, work by Monet and Toulouse-Lautrec. There are also a lot of gloomy scenes of suffering saints and prancing pagan gods. A curious place, full of echoing, empty spaces and, were it not for parties of children and young people being offered theological enlightenment, I might have had the galleries to myself.
Place Philippe Le Bon: Lunch at Le Stromboli.
Maison Coilliot: Art Nouveau house with an extravagant colourful, decorated front; designed by Hector Guimard and completed in 1900.
Rue Pyramides: Number 18, a house dating from 1892 designed by Alfred Newnham with a vaguely Middle Eastern wooden oriel window topped by an elaborate neo-Flemish gable.
Les Halles: Food market, built from 1869 to 1873 with a fanciful front in the ‘Baltard’ style in Place de la Nouvelle Aventure. French painter and architect Victor Baltard made his work with a unified vision of the relationship between architecture, decor and the major arts.
Palais Rameau: Designed in neo-Moorish style by Auguste Mourcou and Henri Contamine, it was built between 1875 and 1879 to accommodate horticultural and artistic exhibitions and musical festivals. A chequered history, now closed and in a poor state of repair.
Dinner at Estaminet T’Rijsel; an intimate candle-lit cavern of ephemera with a hand-written menu in a school exercise book