June 19
Dear Liza,
It keeps getting hotter here in Toulouse, so we are limiting our time outside. This afternoon we managed to have a very warm (but really interesting) afternoon in Le Musée de Vieux Toulouse.
This museum, like so many others, is housed in an ‘hotel particulier”, a mansion once owned by a rich, influential family. It is smaller and more modest than some, but I thought it was charming.
It has a few Roman relics, like this lovely hunk of someone’s mosaic floor. There are some carvings and columns, but I get the feeling that the real good stuff is at a fancier museum.
Between the fall of Rome in 500 and the rise of the merchant class, there’s not much on display. People were too busy just making a living.
But once money started flowing into the city from trade in silk, woad, and farm goods, art and architecture started to thrive. It is really interesting to see a painting almost 100 years old that shows the original towers down by the Canal du Midi. I took a picture of these copies a few days ago. As you can see, the neighborhood has changed a bit.
And this painting of St. Sernin Cathedral is painted from almost the same angle as my photo.
A few changes, I grant you…
The folks at the Musée were very patient with me, answering my clumsy French questions slowly.
I have been practicing reading in French, both in museums and in my translated Agatha Christie novels, and it is really paying off! I was able to read this bit about Jules Léotard, the son of a local gymnastics teacher, who was the inventor of the ‘flying trapeze’ that we see at the circus.
Here is a piece of popular music that was written about him, after he was famous and then became a famous cyclist, participating in the newly popular long distance bike races.
And that’s what I learned today!
Love,
Grandma Judy
Dear Liza 