San Luis de los Franceses

This afternoon Laura and I went to visit the Parroquia of San Luis de los Franceses. This is one of the younger churches in Sevilla coming in at around 300 years of age. It was built as aJesuit monastary but only operated as such for about 30 years until the Suppresion of Jesuits caused it to be repurposed to other church functions. It's a beautiful, baroque church with ornate altars and high painted ceilings. It sits in a relatively ordinary neighborhood with streets so narrow, that it's difficult to capture the entire edifice in one photo without a wide-angle lens:

Inside there were altars and relics. Skulls abounded:

The ceilings were beautiful. Mirrors were provided to save patrons' necks:

An interesting feature of the former monastary is this side chapel that was constructed so that there would be a place to say mass while the big church was being constructed:

In this side chapel there were numerous relics on display. Here for example, are the ribs and collar bones of some saint or other:

This is the door that a priest would use to enter the altar area. I like the floating baby head above the door. Floating baby heads are a big deal in Catholic iconography, at least here in Sevilla:

This courtyard was filled with lush vegetation and skulls-er, I mean old clay pots. I thought they were skulls, cuz why not? there's skulls everywhere else, but no, they're just old clay pots:

This is the crypt beneath the church. Personally, I was disappointed at the complete lack of dead bodies, or at least skulls!

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In other news, one of my Whitman students asked me for advice on where to hike around Walla Walla, so I put together this simple google map to help her out. I also warned her repeatedly that if she encountered snow or mud on the road to one of these, that she should just turn around. It's really easy to get stuck up there (been there, done that).

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The super bowl starts around 12:30am here. I'm thinking I might miss it this year.