Romanesque Churches of the Bourbonnais

December 5, 2006 11:51 PM

Bourbonnais. No, not Bourbonnais, IL, but Bourbonnais, a historic province in France that flourished during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In this area there are hundreds of churches built in the Romanesque style.

In 2004 Stephen Murray, an art history professor, and his students recieved a $500,000 grant to document, process, and archive data from the churches into a digital database, all available online.
posted by provolot (13 comments total)

It's my first FPP, so please be gentle!

Also, I have no personal connection with the project; I attended a presentation and thought it worthy to share with other Mefites.
posted by provolot at 11:52 PM on December 5, 2006

I love to eat hush-puppies dipped in bourbonnaise. Hoo-wee dems good.
posted by Pollomacho at 12:14 AM on December 6, 2006

Oh, and nice post, I should have said that before.
posted by Pollomacho at 12:15 AM on December 6, 2006

Wow! Thank you.
posted by TrolleyOffTheTracks at 1:17 AM on December 6, 2006

I really wish people would stop asking people to be gentle for first FPPs.

Anyway, good post. Although the website interface is a little clunky.
posted by Alex404 at 1:41 AM on December 6, 2006

As an art history student, this is interesting :)
posted by flippant at 2:56 AM on December 6, 2006

They already have that software.

For the porn industry.
posted by IronWolve at 3:00 AM on December 6, 2006

They've packed an amazing amt. of information on there. Nice stuff.
posted by Devils Rancher at 5:02 AM on December 6, 2006

Good post. Terrible, bandwidth crazy, unituitive, over designed Web site, that fronts what looks like a good collection of information about 100 medieval churches. But this is a perfect example of "Web design" that completely obscures its material. Content seems generally interesting. Design = worst of the Web.
posted by paulsc at 5:54 AM on December 6, 2006

Interesting site. I wish someone would do something similarly encyclopedic for images of medieval stained glass. It's pretty easy to photograph, but I can't find high quality collections of images from even the most famous places like Chartres.
posted by Nelson at 9:32 AM on December 6, 2006

wonderful stuff--i love Romanesque--it's so much more warm and human and humane-seeming to me than Gothic. (i think it's the smaller scale and more hand-hewn materials)
posted by amberglow at 3:22 PM on December 6, 2006

i went to Cologne recently and saw fab ones, but they were almost entirely reconstructed--it's wonderful to see originals
posted by amberglow at 3:25 PM on December 6, 2006

Good post.

I have no particular interest in the subject, but someone has done an incredible amount of work to produce this site.

When you are in small towns in Europe, churches are usually the main focal point. Architecture is a very revealing source for the culture of the times.
posted by melkozek at 3:37 PM on December 6, 2006