travelswithalice

It's rare for me these days to see the inside of a church except on holiday. But I do like lighting vigil candles in old churches. I light them in memory of Mommy and Daddy and of Stuart's Mum and Dad. This and the smell of incense remain the best parts of my religious experience.

I also like sitting on a church pew and being quiet. Allowing the dim, cool silence to embrace me. That's why I prefer old country churches- of any denomination- to cathedrals.

The cathedral in Milan fails me on several levels. Powerful floodlights have been installed all around, just below the ceiling. The resulting brash light shows off huge paintings mounted on swinging steel brackets. They remind me of fabric and pattern samples in textile and carpet shops.

The lights also illuminate from inside the painted glass windows that are a sad, unsatisfactory substitute for real stained-glass ones. The original windows were damaged in the last war and proper restoration would be prohibitively expensive. They of course would have been naturally illuminated from outside.




The carved cross-vaulted ceiling turned out to be another "just for show" element. It's not carved at all, it's painted to look carved.


When I sat on a pew, I felt more a compulsion to take photos than a desire to let the moment find a hushed place within me. There was of course the constant clatter of tourist footsteps and the not-quite muted voices of tour guides; but none of these bother me. I understand that these are inescapable features in a major tourist attraction that is forced to mutate into a business enterprise to enable it to generously open its doors to curious people like me.



Selling souvenirs too is necessary to generate funds to make the enterprise financially self-sufficient and economically viable. In this particular case, the souvenir booth is an imposing all-glass kiosk inside the church, with a spire that reaches high towards the ceiling. A gesture mimicking that of the very cathedral it's very much a part of.



I believe it takes more than having a couple of menacing guards standing at a church door, waving away inappropriately dressed people to engender dedication and reverence in a consecrated place of worship.

Enough said.