The oldest church in Andorra is Santa Coloma and it was built somewhere in the 9th or 10th century.
The Church of Santa Coloma (Click for Hi-Res)
The tower is reportedly an addition from the 12th century.
Tower detail (Click for Hi-Res)
Tower Detail 2 (Click for Hi-Res)
Tower Detail 3 (Click for Hi-Res)
Marker at Santa Coloma (Click for Hi-Res)
The church actually has a stone roof as you can see here.
More detail of stone roof
Unfortunately photographs were not permitted inside as it is still used as a church today.
The church was looted during World War 2 and the frescoes were chiseled from the walls and taken by the Nazis. Fortunately, a large wood-carved shrine was pressed against the wall at the front of the church. When it was moved later, a hidden sanctuary was behind the shrine and some of the frescoes were preserved where it rested against the wall.
I have found an image on the Internet of the church interior here:
I mentioned before that Andorra was a tax shelter for banks and I compared its size to Yosemite. My first impression was a “What If” question. What if corporations were allowed to build whatever they wanted in Yosemite valley?
It might look like this.
(From Wikipedia) Corporate development in the Principality of Andorra
Another view of Escalades-Engordany
Modern Andorra
We had an opportunity to travel to Ordino and see some of old city which was much nicer.
Church near old Ordino
Narrow street in old Ordino
Sundial
These old stairs were very interesting.
Church Stairs
Close up of the stonework
Church Door
A nook in the old city of Ordino
A coat of arms set into the railing
I thought old Ordino was very nice, but part of me wonders if Andorra has made a devil’s bargain with the banking industry. To be fair, it is a tiny country without many natural resources beyond tourism.
When I was in Spain, we hopped the Ave through Zaragoza to Lleida and then took a bus up into the Pyrennes.
Taking the Ave into Andorra
Pushing North, we entered the mountain country.
The Pyrenees
Into the Mountains
Mary took this stunning image of a tower in the mountains.
(Click for High Definition Image) Tower in the Pyrenees
Andorra is a small mountain country between France and Spain that makes most of its money as a tax haven for banks and corporations. It’s smaller in size than Yosemite National park in the United States and it looks like a cross between a corporate mega-city and ski lodge. While some of the old city was preserved, the valley floor was filled with large corporate architecture with no detectable concern for the landscape. With the collapse of the banking industry in October, I can’t help but wonder how Andorra is faring.
I’ll post some pictures of Andorra’s old city tomorrow.
I went to see the new Star Trek film last night and the thing that struck me was that all the reboots of recent franchises like Batman, James Bond, and Star Trek are grittier and more difficult for the characters.
American action movies developed this cliche where the hero would punch some trash-talking bad guy and then recite a canned pithy statement. It was tame and safe violence that reinforced the cowboy aesthetic that we were always right and violence was justified. We’ve lived through the Bush era now and Americans as a culture have begun to understand that the pithy cliches have consequences in the real world.
In the film Witness, we see this play out magnificently when Harrison Ford is accompanying an Amish community into the local town. When a redneck heckler starts bullying the Amish, Harrison Ford punches him. It’s classic cowboy cliche and we’re all prepared to lean back and feel good about it until the camera remains on the scene and we start to see the uncomfortable consequences of the violence.
In the first five minutes of the Star Trek film, we see an unwinnable conflict in which people die. I remember when Americans thought women shouldn’t be in combat, but here you see women not only fighting, but dying as well. It’s harsh, jarring, and more sincere.
It’s clear that these characters are paying a price for their actions. When Kirk fights in the bar it isn’t Smokey and the Bandit, it’s more like Fight Club and his face is so bloody and battered at the end, that you worry he’s going to lose teeth. Kirk’s life is hard and he’s struggling to cope. His battered face and the visible emotional struggle behind it are light years away from Shatner’s suave, father-knows-best character.
While I was in Spain, I presented a web seminar or “webinar” on embedded web development with the Rabbit family of embedded computers. It was the highest attended seminar in our company’s history and it has been posted on the web here:
The nice thing is that our stuff is very easy to work with and making an interactive web page to control or monitor hardware is pretty easy. I’ll probably be doing a sequel in early June which I like to call Web Dev 2 – Wrath of RabbitWeb.
