Tag: toulouse

Biannual roundup of your favorite posts

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Above photo from Postcard from Toulouse, France: Falling in love one quirky detail at a time

The year 2022 brought a reshuffling of what blog entries caught your attention. You dove back as far as 2010, an indication of how long I have been blogging.

Barton Springs in Zilker Park, Austin History Center

You politely made one of the stories drawn from research for An Ostrich-Plumed Hat, And Yes, She Shot Him Dead your number one favorite, clearly attracted by Texans’ love of pralines. You continue to support efforts to populate Brackenridge Park with ghosts, and thanks for welcoming a post about my new hometown focusing on the history of Zilker Park. And the quirkiness that is Toulouse sparked your attention. In other words, your interests are as unpredictably wide-ranging as my posts.

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Postcard from Toulouse, France: Images lingering far behind departure

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These eclectic postcards are from the fall but are slow to be delivered due to an unwillingness to admit the trip had ended with our next one cancelled because of this stubborn virus.

Feeling secure enough now that we will take flight somewhere within the next month so can finally bid au revoir to Toulouse.

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Postcard from Toulouse, France: Church-hopping, so genuflect quickly

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Above, Altar for the Privileged in the Basilica of Notre Dame de la Daurade. Is the skull an invitation to enter or a dire warning not to dare trespass within? I elected not to test it.

Time for a final round of visits to churches in Toulouse. First stop is the Basilica of Notre Dame de la Daurade. The Virgin Mary’s “golden” designation came from shimmering mosaics in the original 5th-century church adjacent to this site. The church’s prized statue of the Virgin was stolen during the 15th century and replaced. Particularly revered by pregnant women, the figures of the Virgin and Child became so blackened by the smoke of votive candles lit by supplicants that the Virgin became known as the Black Madonna, or La Vierge Noire, by the 16th century.

Riverside, the Black Madonna’s original home was demolished in 1761 for the construction of wharves. Rebuilt, a new church served as the Virgin’s temple for only a short time before the 1789 outbreak of the French Revolution. Revolutionaries repurposed the church as a tobacco factory and set the icon ablaze in the Place du Capitole, reducing the treasured statue into a pile of ashes.

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