Albi Encore - May 21, 2024

 May 21, 2024

Since Judy is an artist, it is imperative that we visit the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum in Albi. This is a repeat for us, but as we thought, we saw lots of things we hadn't seen before. Here's our previous notes about Albi: https://retiredtraveller.blogspot.com/2024/05/albi-toulouse-lautrec-may-12-2024.html

This time, our GPS sent us into the city a different way and we parked under the Covered Market, just a block away from the Cathedral. Of course, we had to explore the market a bit.

Originally built in 1905, new entrance doors were added a few years ago.

You can see the architecture of the covered market. There is a floor beneath this that also has shops.

Entrance to the covered market. There's a parking garage under the building that was added in 2006.

As Dave noted, you can really only visit the cathedral and the museum in one day. Both of them demand your extended attention, even if you've seen them before. So, we started with the church. This time we started by paying the entrance fee to the original chancel and  followed the audio guide in order as our brochure described. We absorbed a lot more that way. 

The original chancel of the church when only the monks worshipped here and the townspeople sat behind the rood screen. A second chancel, in the west facade, added a second altar which allowed the townspeople to better participate in the worship. 

The chancel soars above the altar and everything is painted, each panel a work of art.

This 18th century organ has 5 keyboards and 3578 pipes. Unimaginable!

Entrance on the rood screen to the original chancel

the carving is magical everywhere you look. This is the ceiling of the entrance to the original chancel

chapel to Saint-Cécile

Saint-Cécile, for whom the cathedral is named

Next was lunch in our "usual" park across from the south entrance to the cathedral.

lunch in the park 

Then on to the museum. This time I spent time looking at favorite paintings of Toulouse-Lautrec and then spent more time on the history and architecture of the bishop's palace which houses the museum.

The bishop's palace is now the Toulouse-Lautred museum

Some rooms in the museum use original parts of the building.

This mirror reflects the room, restored to how it would have looked in medieval days. Dave is carefully disguised behind his phone.

We crossed the river for a different view of the cathedral and palace.

looking across the river at the cathedral and old city

A long drive home, but our reward was a lovely setting of aperos. Cheers!

To finish the day, we had a rainbow over our location. What a lucky day!

We think our host told us this had been a dovecote, but it doesn't look like others I've seen.

Our house is on the right. David and Lorna, our hosts, live in the house on the left.

I know it's hard to see, but there is a rainbow in the sky. I think it's a replacement for the mountains that we haven't seen in the past few days.