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Luceram

Buildings perched high on the rock on either side of a deep ravine. A bridge is visible midway up the hight of the ravine. Building span the ravine in places further back into town.   Luceram is a beautiful little town that seems relatively unaffected by the flux of tourists in the region by virtue of being just far enough off the beaten path.  It seems that in medieval times most of the population sought shelter from pirates by heading inland and building their towns in inaccessible places like this one which is on top of a narrow ridge between two gorges.  Now it is protected from tourists by virtue of some 30 kilometers of windy road from Nice.  This protection from invaders was effective on the digestive system of my four year old daughter and nearly sent us home as well.
My family on one of the many narrow streets of Luceram. The six story rock buildings with windows and shutters all the way up are only ten feet apart in this photo.

  The "streets" are so narrow and steep that they are really more like stairways.  The buildings are stacked one atop the other in successive remodelings and reuses of older structures.   The buildings are often six stories high but I suspect they got that way slowly.  Note the satellite dish, power cables and ancient rock work  

One of the pretty little public terraces in Luceram. An old wine press is placed against a rock wall with a water fountain in the background. Potted plants are here and there. Next to the wine press is a cheap plastic chair.
 Like a lot of Europe there are plentiful remnants of past effort like this wine press which was placed in a small public terrace with flowers and various other inviting features.  Note the ubiquitous plastic chair.  I almost moved it to take this picture before I realized how important it was.  Presented here for the visitor's pleasure is the stark contrast between those things that are preserved over time and those (like the plastic chair) that will be used for a while, then discarded.  I'm sure that wine presses like this one were tossed in the dump by the hundreds when better solutions became available.  The few that remain are now seen as precious.  Plastic chairs by the millions are made, used, become brittle and are tossed.  In fifty years they may become rare enough to be seen as a precious icon of this period in history.  For now we try to ignore them.
Maite and Aidan ascending a narrow stairway through a dark passage under row of buildings.

Some of the routes through Luceram are staircases that tunnel under buildings to emerge on a higher street.  The adjacent houses often have doors or windows into these dark spaces.  The overall effect is like some secret passage that departs one place and time and travels to another.  Here we are leaving the part of the city that is accessible by car to enter the quiet pedestrian village beyond.  Note the absence of handrails, lighting or other safety code related requirements we Americans expect.  This too is a remnant of a time past (when people didn't sue for their own stupidity).
One of the many fountains provided in town for doing laundry. Water runs freely into a series of basins. The road descends steeply down and through a tunnel in the background.
 Also left over from not so long ago are little fountains that were scattered about town for the convenience of those who did the laundry.  They're still functional and are used for the occasional item that doesn't fit in the washer.  Seeing these fountains makes me wonder about how life must have changed when you no longer met your neighbors for gossip while you labored over you family's dirt.  There must have been a shared understanding of your lot in life as you literally "aired your dirty laundry".  It has only been a few decades since we started to expect so much privacy and loneliness in our troubles.
Me and my two kids at the edge of a terrace that overlooks the town of Luceram. There are at least three churches in this small town.  In the back ground, note the clock tower of this older church is no longer higher than the surrounding buildings and one fellow's terrace looks directly at the churchbell.  For a sculptor it was fun to see the composition of structures jumbled at various angles to one another and the texture of the clay tile roofs against the rock work.  Ah, then throw in the occasional satellite dish as you look towards the very back of town and its thirteenth century guard tower.
A short chimney on a tile roof frames a hillside of terraced gardes nin the background.
 The town is very compact and surrounded only by terraced gardens on the steep hills. 
My family in front of the very old and crumbling ramparts.
 Here we are at the outskirts of town.  The town is made mostly of multistoried buildings right to the edge of town.  Then it just stops.  No cascade of suburbs or even villas in the surrounding area.  Just gardens which are themselves increasingly disused.  This is the invaders side of the thirteenth century guard tower and ramparts.  It is a big sculpture to me, a crumbling monument to a previous lifestyle, displayed on a rock in the mountains, that just happens to have people living in it all the time.  It is being lovingly preserved by the inhabitants who seem to have a remarkable understanding of what they have.
closeup view of the Saint Margarite clock tower in Luceram.
 Central to any town here is the clock tower.  This one is at the Saint Margarite church which is known for the high quality artwork that adorns its interior (no photos allowed). 
My children looking at a room-sized creche with all sorts of medieval activity depicted. We were lucky enough to have the operator of the Crèche Museum come and open up for us to visit.  It was suprising to see a museum dedicated entirely to "Crèche" which is another word for the little nativity scenes depicting the baby Jesus in Bethlehem that are set out at Christmas.  When I was a kid we had one that was made in the US and one from Mexico.  My wife has one that is from Peru.  Every Christian culture develops a scene to match their ideas of what the event must have been like.  This museum must have had over a hundred different crèches.  Here is an elaborate Provençal crèche that depicts medieval Luceram.
A set of carved wooden figures sit in front of a grass enclosure. They have crèche from far away places like this one from somewhere in Africa.
A birds nest contains a baby Jesus, a Mary, a cow and a sheep. They have crèche in a wide variety of settings and containers.  Here is a crèche built in a birds nest.
image of a gourd cut open to provide a setting for a nativity scene. Several little figures made from seeds stand on various surfaces.
 This crèche is a unique one made most entirely from one gourd.  The all the characters are carved from the seeds.
a glass display case contains a number of small creches each of which is a slef contained object. in the upper right is a steel ball (used for the game Petank) that has been cut in half and surmounted with a cross. The hollow inside the ball has been filled with a nativity scene.
 Here are some tiny crèche in things like a walnut shell, a matchbox and a sawn open Petanque ball (upper right). 
Barely discernable image of a creche made of seashells and the head of an eel.

Even after all of that, this one surprised me: a crèche in the mouth of an eel.  (We originally went to Luceram in order to visit a small museum dedicated to old tools.  Unfortunately, the operator was busy that day and so it was closed.  I'm not sure I would have taken the time to consider crèches had it been open.  It makes me think of Robert Bricker's comment that he prefers religious art because it is about the religion and art but not the glory of the sculptor or his patron.)

18 Septembre 2005

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