Toulouse Attractions, France

SD Sernin
In Toulouse, from the Place du Capitole Rue du Taur runs north, passing the 14th C. church of Notre-Dame du Taur, with a fortified facade, to the church of St Sernin.
The basilica of St Sernin, a wide brick-built church with a five-aisled nave and three-aisled transepts, is one of the most magnificent pilgrimage churches on the pilgrim road to Santiago de Compostela and one of the finest of all Romanesque churches. The choir was built between 1075 and 1080 and consecrated in 1096, and the church was completed during the 13th C. It was restored by Viollet-le- Duc in the 19th C. It stands on the site of an earlier church in which St Saturninus (Sernin) was buried. Particularly fine are the choir with its ring of nine chapels and the six-story tower over the crossing which was much imitated in Languedoc and Gascony. It has imposing doorways, particularly the Porte Miégeville in the south aisle, with 12th C. Romanesque sculpture (on left King David, on the lintel the Apostles, in the tympanum the Ascension). In the south transept is the Porte des Comtes, with capitals depicting Lazarus and the rich man and the torments of the damned; to the left of the doorway is a recess containing four sarcophagi of Counts of Toulouse.

Eglise des Jacobins
In Toulouse, west of the Place du Capitole is the brick-built Gothic church of the Jacobins (1260-1292), with a cloister of 1307. On one side is a handsome tower, built in 1301-1304 on the model of St Sernin. The two-aisled nave has dark-veined groined vaulting, which radiates in fan form from the last of the seven central piers in the choir. The remains of St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) were deposited in this church in 1974.

Musée des Augustins
In Toulouse, the Musée des Augustins, housed in a former Augustinian monastery, including the chapterhouse and the cloisters (14th and 17th C.), has a large collection of sculpture, with fine examples of Early Christian sarcophagi and medieval sculpture, and of pictures.

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