Tourist information -
Limoges
Limoges is not a city that calls for a long stay,
but it is worth a look for a magnificent train station and the craft
industries that made the city a household name: enamel in the Middle
Ages and, since the eighteenth century, china, including some of
the finest ever produced. If these appeal, then the city's unique
museum collections - and its Gothic cathedral - will reward a visit.
But it has to be said that the industry today seems a spent tradition,
hard hit by recession and changing tastes among the rich. The local
kaolin (china clay) mines that gave Limoges china its special quality
are exhausted, and the workshops survive mainly on the tourist trade.
The Cathédrale St-Étienne , a landmark for miles
around, was begun in 1273 and planned on the model of the cathedral
of Amiens, though only the choir, completed in the early thirteenth
century, is pure Gothic. The rest of the building was added piecemeal
over the centuries, the western part of the nave not until 1876.
The most striking external feature is the sixteenth-century facade
of the north transept, built in full Flamboyant style with elongated
arches, clusters of pinnacles and delicate tracery in window and
gallery. At the west end of the nave, the tower, erected on a Romanesque
base that had to be massively reinforced to bear the weight, has
octagonal upper storeys, in common with most churches in the region.
It once stood as a separate campanile and probably looked the better
for it. Inside, the effects are much more pleasing, and the rose
stone looks warmer than on the weathered exterior. The sense of
soaring height is accentuated by all the upward-reaching lines of
the pillars, the net of vaulting ribs, the curling, flame-like lines
repeated in the arcading of the side chapels and the rose window,
and, above all, as you look down the nave, by the narrower and more
pointed arches of the choir.
The best of the city's museums - with its showpiece collections
of enamelware dating back as far as the twelfth century - is the
Musée Municipal de l'Évêché (June daily
except Tues 10-11.45am & 2-6pm; July-Sept daily 10-11.45am &
2-6pm; Oct-May daily except Tues 10-11.45am & 2-5pm; free) in
the old bishop's palace next to the cathedral. There's an interesting
progression to be observed in the museum, from the simple, sober,
Byzantine-influenced champlevé (copper filled with enamel),
to the later, especially seventeenth- and eighteenth-century work
that used a far greater range of colours and indulged in elaborate
virtuoso portraiture. By the nineteenth century, however, the spirit
and vigour had dissipated, and although there are contemporary artisans
in the city using the medium, their work, too - judging from this
display - is not much more successful. There is also an exhibition
of the wartime Resistance (June daily except Tues 10-11.45am &
2-6pm; July to mid-Sept daily 10-11.45am & 2-6pm; rest of year
daily except Tues 2-5pm; free) housed in an outbuilding opposite
the museum's main entrance.
Outside, if the weather is good, the well-laid-out and interesting
botanical garden (daily sunrise to sunset; free) is an inviting
prospect, descending gracefully towards the River Vienne. In the
garden's northern corner an old refectory now houses the excellent
Cité des Métiers et des Arts (June & Sept daily
2-6.30pm; July & Aug daily 11am-6.30pm; rest of year Wed, Sat
& Sun 2-6pm; 25F/?3.81) displaying pieces - mostly carpentry
- by France's top crafts' guild members.
Over to the west of the cathedral is the partly renovated old quarter
of the town. Make your way through to rue de la Boucherie, for a
thousand years the domain of the butchers' guild, and today featuring
several good restaurants. The dark, cluttered chapel of St-Aurélien
, with a delicate fourteenth-century cross outside, belongs to them,
while one of their former shophouses makes an interesting little
museum, the Maison de la Boucherie , at no. 36 (July to mid-Sept
daily 10am-1pm & 3-7pm; free). At the top of the street is the
market in place de la Motte and, to the right, partly hidden by
adjoining houses, the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century church of
St-Michel-des-Lions , named after the two badly weathered Celtic
lions guarding the south door and topped by one of the best towers
and spires in the region. The inside is dark and atmospheric, with
two beautiful, densely coloured fifteenth-century windows either
side of the choir, one of which - in the south aisle - depicts the
Tree of Jesse.
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