Rouen: Ossuary from the Plague and Ceramics

Saturday, May 4, 2013, Rouen France

Rouen is a walking city, with many pedestrian streets.  Well, today we walked.  We are staying at a hotel with an unpronounceable name: Hotel-Spa de Bougtheroulde, which is in an old mansion. Here is the outside:

 

And here is the courtyard:

 

We went first to the wonderful Eglise St-Maclau, and then to the Aitre St-Maclou, which had been an ossuary used for the victims of the plague.  There is a large central courtyard:

 

Around the courtyard on the face of the building is a vast series of spooky and grotesque artwork, with skeletons, skeleton parts, gravediggers’ tools, and constructions made partly of sculpted bones.  Here are a couple of samples:

 

 

 

Supposedly this ossuary was part of the inspiration Camille Saint-Saens had for his Danse Macabre.

There is a huge number of amazing churches here, sometimes right on top of one another.  It’s easy to get jaded: just another spectacular Gothic church:

 

We had a delicious light lunch, and I had a glass of local wine.  This is a center for hard cider, and there are many brands.  Joyce had a bottle of cider which is as potent as wine, and felt it as we walked off the lunch and went to the phenomenal ceramics museum.  Rouen was a center for the development and manufacture of all sorts of ceramics, especially porcelain, and the museum here is wonderful.  About 2/3 of the pieces on exhibit were made here; the rest are from all over Europe, but mostly from other parts of France.  Here I’m in a gorgeous room in the museum, which used to be a private mansion:

 

Just about all religious art is Christian from the time of Jesus and after, but here is a beautiful, very old representation of Moses bringing down the ten commandments:

 

Here is a close up:

 

Here is a Delft violin, of all things:

 

Here is a magnificent globe on a stand:

 

 

Tomorrow we plan on the Musee des Beaux-Arts (the Fine Arts Museum) which, according to Fodor’s, “is famed for its scintillating collection of paintings and sculptures from the 16^th to the 20^th century…”