25th of August we had planned to discover the cultural highlights of León and to catch up on my diary.
After having already seen so many cathedrals you think there will not be a lot more which could surprise you, but Santa Maria de la Regla is also called “Pulchra Leonina” which means “beautiful Leonese”. Even if a choir in the main ship interrupts the perspective of the complete space, it is one of the most outstanding gothic churches, comparable to the Sainte Chapelle in Paris where the supporting walls are reduced to the most minimalized structural ribs, vaults and pointed arches as possible. How did they discover that you can build like this? Learning by doing? That could be a painful way, but it’s still standing after 800 years. The reduction of wall material allows 125 windows to bring in light from all directions into this vertical space, reaching up into the sky, which adds up to be the largest still existing stained glass surface from medieval times of 1.800m².
As the sun rises in the east Jesus is the first figure to enlighten this place. The more the southern façade is filled with sunshine during the day the Apostles and Saints are glowing in orange and red colours. There is also a colouring concept for the figures of the windows in the northern façade as they don’t get direct light from the sun. Here are all the representatives of the old testament shown facing towards Jesus, still awaiting the messiah to come.
But the most fascinating fact of this building is that León in these days was a town with 5.000 inhabitants, and they managed to realize this miracle within 53 years. I was at awe, because I just turned 54 and I still remember as a school boy we were counting cars at the main road of my hometown Starnberg which is located at the end of a lake and at the bottleneck of a two lane highway ending in the middle of the city. The research we were doing was to get data to prove we needed a tunnel to liberate the city centre from traffic. We have 20.000 inhaitants and they are still discussing today. More than that – as I grew up in the third generation of an architects’ family – my mother and I contributed in the last forty years five proposals how to find urban and architectural solutions to connect the city with the lake over several railway tracks that are cutting the town off from the lake. Actually I was recently elected into an advisory committee to consult the city on this subject, but don’t ask me how many generations will still pass over this issue.
After the gothic style we were discovering the Roman history of this town as the cathedral grew out of the Roman city walls and the ruins of the thermal baths are just beside the cathedral. In one of the guarding towers was a little museum about the impact of the Romans starting with the Legion VII settling in 68 a.C. That’s where the name originated from, “Legion” turned into “León”. They still had a stamp on a tile with the name of the “LEG VII”. Isn’t it all about leaving an imprint, I thought. Don’t we all want to leave something which leaves a track of our short span of life, being a guest on this planet? I see pilgrims taking selfies in front of monuments that are centuries old. They want to be part of the shine and the glory of the creators who managed to leave something lasting.
After a short siesta I finally started to work on my diary-blog again until we had to leave to see the museum of Gaudí at the Casa Botines, which was a warehouse and apartment building designed by Antoni Gaudí. There were so many innovating ideas in his concept of the building like the foundation in a swamp land and the way of air conditioning through interior courts. Even the layout of the building was twisted and has the shape of the “Giant Dipper”. But what fascinated me the most was the fact that they had one of Gaudí’s structure models made out of cords and weights to follow the perfect angles of gravitation by hanging them down. Once you mirrored that idea you had the perfect shape of a cathedral like the “Sagrada Familia”. But that’s another big chapter.
We walked through the old city part and discovered a footprint in copper, which was repeatedly to be discovered again and again. It was the print of a Roman Sandal, which looked exactly like the print of my barefoot shoes and it perfectly fitted my size.
I found a vegetarian dinner at a Ramen place on a beautiful plaza, when by coincidence the retired bishop of Montreal Lionel Grandon walked by our table. We wanted to invite him for dinner, but he was not very fond of the idea of eating Japanese in Spain. Coming back to our hotel I wanted to continue with my blog, but the guitarist Juan Hedo introduced us to two guys from Cologne, Stephan and Nicolas. So we ended up chatting in this wonderful ambiance with a guitar concert in the court of this old monastery.
