Friday, September 24, 2004

old time religion

i´m not quite sure the last time i had stepped foot in a church before today but i´m quite positive it had never had the same feeling. today, after radka and i went and got her visa for india, we met collin to tour the Saint Nicholas Cathedral. Upon stepping foot into this baroque masterpiece i was overcome with an emotional wave never elicited by either architecture or religion before. The massive marble ionic columns, the gilded gold representations of angels, the masterful use of di sotto in sù and chiaroscuro techniques in the ceiling fresco to pull it all together as if it were not even a painting but a continuation of the room up into the heavens..... words could only attempt to describe this building and even then they could never touch on the feeling this structure evokes. heavy, heavy, HEAVY...
oh yeah...we also saw the Prague Castle, St. Vitus Cathedral and viewed the city from it´s gothic bell tower. all quite impressive in their own right but none the less anticlimactic compared with the indelible impression created by the sanctuary of St. Nicholas