标签教堂下的文章

圣米歇尔山，法国诺曼底 The island of Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy, France (© DaLiu/Getty Images)

一个神圣的愿望孕育了第一个小教堂 A saintly vision inspired the first chapel

Mont-Saint-Michel

The stunning sight of Mont-Saint-Michel rising out of the bay is unforgettable. And visiting the island will be too, if you time it right. The paved causeway is accessible only when the tide is out; otherwise, you're at the mercy of the muddy flats, dangerous quicksand, and the quickly rising tide.

Today's visitors are following in the footsteps of pilgrims who for centuries traversed Europe to pray at the sacred site. The local bishop of Avranches built a chapel on this rock in 708 after the archangel St. Michael visited him in a dream, and the rest, as they say, is history. Now the island, half a mile off the coast of Normandy in northwestern France, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its permanent population is fewer than 50 people, including a dozen or so monks and nuns, but more than 3 million visitors cross over to the island most years.

圣米歇尔山

圣米歇尔山从海湾升起的壮观景象令人难忘。如果时间合适的话，去岛上游玩也会很愉快。铺砌的堤道只有在退潮时才能到达；否则，你将任由泥泞的平地、危险的流沙和快速上涨的潮水摆布。

今天的游客正追随几个世纪以来穿越欧洲、在圣地祈祷的朝圣者的脚步。公元708年，大天使圣迈克尔在梦中拜访了阿夫兰切斯的当地主教，之后他在这块岩石上修建了一座小教堂，其余的，正如他们所说的，已经成为历史。现在，这个岛距离法国西北部诺曼底海岸半英里，是联合国教科文组织的世界遗产。该岛的常住人口不到50人，其中包括十几名僧侣和尼姑，但大多数年份有300多万游客前往该岛。

坎塔布里亚的小教堂，西班牙 The chapel and hermitage of Santa Justa in Cantabria, Spain (© Luis Miguel Martin/Getty Images)

The Hermitage of Santa Justa

Today's image brings us to Cantabria, a rugged region on the north coast of Spain. To reach this isolated stone hut, you'll need to wait until the frothing waters of the Bay of Biscay hit low tide, then traverse a silty path to the structure's façade. Peering in the windows, you'll see a cavernous room adorned with shrines—the long-abandoned living quarters of a religious hermit who dwelt here in the 8th century. Not your typical waterfront condo, but hey, it's cozy.

圣胡斯塔的隐居地

今天的图片带我们来到坎塔布里亚，一个位于西班牙北海岸的崎岖地区。要到达这座孤零零的石头小屋，你需要等到比斯开湾的泡沫水达到低潮，然后穿过一条粉土小路到达建筑物的正面。从窗户往里看，你会看到一个洞穴般的房间，里面装饰着神龛——一位8世纪居住在这里的宗教隐士长期被遗弃的居住区。这不是你典型的海滨公寓，但它很舒适。

从波迪安西之路的洛特谷中望向圣西尔克·拉波皮教堂，法国洛特 (© Reinhard Schmid/Huber/eStock Photo)

被洪水淹没的温彻斯特大教堂地下室，英国汉普郡 The flooded crypt at Winchester Cathedral, Hampshire, England (© Oliver Hoffmann/Alamy)

Who left the tub running?

'Sound II,' this sculpture by Antony Gormley, has stood here in the oft-flooded crypt of Winchester Cathedral in the south of England since 1986—not trying to get a plumber on the horn, but quietly standing guard and studying the water in its cupped hands. Elsewhere in the cathedral you'll find another notable statue: The likeness of William 'Diver Bill' Walker, a local hero who—for six years starting in 1906—worked alone in a heavy diving suit to shore up the increasingly flooded structure as it threatened to sink into the boggy soil beneath. Nowadays it's stable, but the lowest level still sees its share of standing water during rainy periods.

We're here on the feast day of Swithin (sometimes spelled Swithun), the 9th-century bishop who's now venerated as patron saint of the cathedral. But St. Swithin is most commonly name-dropped in an old weather proverb that begins, 'St. Swithin's day if thou dost rain, for 40 days it will remain.'

The good news: 'St. Swithin's day if thou be fair, for 40 days 'twill rain nae mare.' But if this all just sounds like hooey to you, try today's quiz and see if you think any other weather folklore holds water.

Madonna della Corona教堂，意大利 The Sanctuary of Madonna della Corona in Italy (© Volodymyr Kalyniuk/Alamy)

Looking for peace on the precipice

The Sanctuary of Madonna della Corona sits on an outcropping almost 2,500 feet high overlooking the Adige River Valley in Northern Italy, near the city of Verona. Since the Middle Ages, this spot has been a destination for religious pilgrimages. The faithful are drawn no doubt by the views and, perhaps, the dangerous path to get there--enlightenment shouldn't come easy.

Over the centuries, the structure has evolved from a hermitage to a church, first inaugurated in 1530, and eventually to a sanctuary for contemplation and reflection. In the mid-1970s, architect Guido Tisato oversaw a major renovation, including digging out more of the mountain to add additional space. Today, visitors can reach the sanctuary from above via a paved path or from below, on a longer trail, known as the 'Path of Hope,' that ends with a steep staircase zigzagging upward. We think those who manage the climb up may be justified in feeling a little superior.

格里博耶多夫运河和滴血救世主教堂，俄罗斯圣彼得堡 Griboyedov Canal and the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood in Saint Petersburg, Russia (© Tomas Sereda/Getty Images)

A midsummer twilight's dream

The Russian language classifies light and dark shades of blue as separate colors—which comes in especially handy if you venture north to Saint Petersburg in midsummer. The seaport metropolis sits less than 500 miles outside the Arctic Circle, so at the height of summer, the twilit 'blue hour' coveted by photographers lasts virtually all night long as the sun hovers just below the horizon. It's a phenomenon dubbed the 'White Nights' and it usually lasts from mid-June 11 to early July.

This particular view peers past the dark blue ('siniy') waters of the Griboyedov Canal at the dramatically named Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood. Framed against a light blue ('goluboi') sky, the church's colorful exterior is almost as dazzling as the motley mosaics covering the walls inside. The Griboyedov Canal, cutting south and west through a district dense with museums, theaters, and parks, is part of Saint Petersburg's intricate system of man-made waterways that earn the city one of its nicknames: 'Venice of the North.'

以圣保罗大教堂为背景的千禧桥，英国伦敦 London Millennium Bridge with St. Paul's Cathedral in the background, London, England (© Scott Baldock/Getty Images)

The Millennium at 20

The view you're seeing was first made possible exactly 20 years ago, but a photo from the same spot on June 10, 2000, might've come out a tad blurry. That's because when the London Millennium Bridge opened to flocks of pedestrians on that date, it wobbled so much it was closed after just two days. But the bridge reopened with improvements in 2002, and today it's stable in terms of not only lateral g-force but also photo-op popularity.

Famous for its hodgepodge of bleeding-edge design and preserved historic architecture, the London cityscape is full of anachronistic scenes like this. The bridge and St. Paul's Cathedral, seen a few blocks north across the Thames, were built about 300 years apart (just a fraction of London's nearly 2,000-year history). If we could about-face, the contrast of eras would be even more pronounced: Behind us near the bridge's south end lies a reconstruction of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre neighboring the Tate Modern, an art museum converted from a mid-20th-century power plant.

A hermitage with a view

If this vivid landscape has you feeling pulled into the photo, take a deep breath before you look right or left. Or maybe just fix your gaze on the medieval brick ruin ahead—the Hermitage of La Pertusa in northern Catalonia, Spain. Glance sideways and you'll be greeted by sheer vertical drops to the basin of the Canelles Reservoir, across which lies the region of Aragon—historically a powerful kingdom that ruled Catalonia and much of the Mediterranean.

An actual visit to this spot would require traversing a steep, rocky trail to the narrow outcrop that hosts the hermitage, once the chapel of a long-collapsed Romanesque castle. But imagine the reward: a vista of the beauty Catalonia offers beyond busy Barcelona.

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