Cathedral Basilica of St Louis

Now that Cheryl has her own car she has started to explore St Louis. Mary, a friend that we have made who works at Michaels (the craft shop where Beth does arts & crafts on a Saturday morning) arranged for Cheryl & Beth to meet her & her teenage children to visit the Cathedral Basilica whilst I was at work.

The Archbishop, John Glennon, began building the cathedral 1907, with a unique design that combines Romanesque style architecture externally with a Byzantine style interior. In the narthex (vestibule) the mosaics depict the life of the cathedral's patron, Saint Louis IX, King of France. The great center dome & the two lesser domes & half domes, together with the arches, reveal in mosaic art the story of the Catholic Faith from creation to the last judgment. Portraying scenes from both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, the mosaic works picture men and women from Judeo-Christian history as well as illustrating the more recent development of the Catholic Church in North America & particularly in St Louis. This is the largest mosaic collection in the world created by 20 different artists and covering 83,000 square feet. It contains 41.5 million pieces of glass tesserae with over 7,000 colors & was started in 1912 & finally completed in 1988.

Cheryl & Beth really enjoyed their visit. I have yet to visit the cathedral, but the pictures that Cheryl took really convey the ornate architectural details & cathedral interior.

The journey back to Fenton included a detour to 'The Hill'. This is the Italian area of St Louis that is well known for the Italian restaurants & bakeries. Cheryl brought back some authetic Italian rolls. These were really cheap & were quite nice as they weren't as sweet as the rolls bought from the local supermarkets.