Sto. Domingo church, Oaxaca - gilded magnificence

[bixaorellana]

Yes, they are truly wonderful trees. There are huge ones in the cemetery in Key West -- gives it a really different feel from other cemeteries!

Thank you, Ansh. I apologize for not knowing the correct architectural terms for the parts of the monastery. I think what I'm calling the outer halls are correctly known as cloisters. I've also been unsuccessful in finding out more details on the monastic use of the place. However, in that quest I came across this youtube video, which you may find interesting.

I'd sure like to know the date this was taken, as it certainly was earlier than 2010, when it was uploaded to youtube. There is no garden at all in it! Speaking of which, I'm been thinking about Kerouac's little joke about getting rid of the cobblestones in the boat courtyard & putting in a garden & fountain. That's probably closer to the original use, I'd think. Surely any tillable space would have at least herbs in it. Maybe there was a well there, too.

By this point, I was sort of flagging in the heat, but still taking pictures. This was an interesting space, & seeing the video above cleared up a mystery for me. There are some framed glassy things next to the ceiling ornamentation that looked like nothing so much as gilded mildew. ~?~ In the video you can see quite clearly that they're mirrors. Dampness must have gotten in and ruined them.
Those must be the evangelists in the corners. They appear to be riding on the creatures that represent them.


Or not. This is very odd. Note the mirror on the right. You can see mirrors up high in many old churches. I think they were to help cast light on the ceilings.

You know, this place is really beautiful ~

Time for a potty break. No expense was spared on the facilities ~

Your intrepid reporter, who appears to have been overly aggressive in taming & flattening her hair ~


The bathroom wall, which appears to have fragments of original mural on it ~

[bixaorellana]

Just a few more pictures as I wend my way out of here ~

Turning a corner, I was dazzled by this mirage-like view ~

I like the doors, which must be a modern take on whatever plain doors were here originally ~

And I love this bannister, which I read is original.
When I touched it, I had to take a closer look, as it's hollow, rather rustic hand-worked metal ~

And you all will recognize that we're coming down to where we first came up to enter the monastery ~


Of course no trip to a museum is complete without a visit to the gift shop. This one has some really nice stuff in it. Note the flamboyant trees through the window. Those are the young ones shown earlier in this report ~

[bixaorellana]

Outside, I'm almost blinded by the glare, but focus in on this colorful activity ~






Although bands, elaborate traditional dances, and gorgeously garbed people are commonplace in front of Santo Domingo, something feels a little off about this bunch.
And why is a young woman in short-shorts marching among the costumed people giving orders?

Bride-like woman, but no groom -- a Señorita Havisham?                                  She might be hot & grumpy.
   

Going to the front of the massed dancers, the mystery is solved. There are big cameras and sound equipment & a guy directing the dancers to do their thing when he gives the signal so the model can walk between them towards the camera.

And he gives the signal! The band plays, the dancers dance. The model does not budge.

My little black camera was hot in the sun, so I didn't wait around to see all those people started and stopped again. That's the end of our visit to Sto. Domingo for this time.

¡Hasta luego!

[mossie]

Very colourful as usual, thanks Bixa.
Were the old mirrors perhaps to frighten away the devil, if he looked in the window and saw his reflection

[tod2]

What a lovely ending Bixa! I couldn't find the 'short-shorts' person but did spot a nun under the yellow and white umbrella ;D
And what about those red shoes the bride was sporting.....I'm sure that's why she appeared grumpy!
I loved looking deeper into some of the murals and wondered if the mural in Reply#60- 4th pic after the video - were a group of Friar's with some pulling on ropes to ring bells. The one Friar seems to be hurrying somewhere and getting a stern look from the other. On the floor there looks like a cloth or paper drawing that has a print on it similar to the Shroud of Turin.....

I would love to see all this in real life - you certainly have shown us superb things down Mexico way!

[anshjain97]

Bixa, do you know why it was so empty inside? I mean, such a place really should attract the hordes!

[htmb]

I agree with tod. This is a fantastic report and I would also like to visit.

[bixaorellana]

Many, many thanks to all of you who had the graciousness to comment on this thread. It's very appreciated.

Mossie, I never considered that about the devil. It's a possibility!

Tod, I never got a picture of the short-shorts. For one thing, she was moving too quickly for me to maneuver around to where she was, and for another, I couldn't see very well what I was shooting, because of the glare. But hey ~~ good call on the nun. I meant to mention her & forgot. When you come to Oaxaca, buy her cookies! They're really good & the proceeds are to help fix up the Dominican convent. (factoid: the Dominican nuns were founded before the Dominican friars, 1206 & 1214 respectively)

Interesting & plausible take on the mural. I thought the three on the left were playing basketball.

Re: the red shoes. Nah, I'm sure the model wasn't bothered by them. Mexican women -- Oaxacan ones, anyway -- have no bones in their feet. There is no other way to account for their propensity and talent with cute shoes. While we lesser females are wincing with pain in our sensible shoes as our ankles double over on the uneven pavement, our Oaxacan sisters are cheerily skimming the cobblestones in gorgeous, impossibly high-heeled creations.

Ansh, good question. There were people there, but not so many that I couldn't cut them out of my photos for the most part. See the man in the fifth photo from the bottom in #60? I obligingly hid behind a pillar so he could get a good shot. I didn't mind his being in my photo since his white shirt was innocuous, but I figured my yellow dress would be a jarring note in his. I believe Museum Week ended the week before I visited the ex-convent, so maybe everyone went then, when it was free.

Thank you so much, Htmb. I wish you would come. I'll bet you'd ferret out some great places to see that I haven't visited in all my time here.

Really & truly, this is an excellent piss-up location ~~ see if you & Tod can't light a fire under each other!

[nycgirl]

This is such a richly detailed report full of wonderful images. It's clearly a beautiful building, but you capture it with great skill. I especially love your shot of the window-framed landscape reflected on the wall. It looks like a sheet of water is inside the church.

Speaking of reflections, you're looking good yourself! Love your embroidered yellow dress and plummy shade of lipstick.

So cool that you stumbled onto that photo shoot, or whatever it was. I could never get tired of looking at those colorful Oaxacan dresses.

[lugg]

Eureka, I now know why I was so puzzled by this building, I presumed that when you referred to it as a convent that it was a nunnery , now after following the links I understand that it was a monastery.

Fabulous photos and really interesting. Parts of it i.e. the buildings around the courtyard with the boats look almost Moorish. I Unlike K2 I like the boats.

Can you visit the gardens or are they closed ? -

Edit - somehow I had not seen your latest additions May 30, 2013, 7:13am until I posted my response - probably because I forgot to log out yesterday (again ) so will come back to those later

[bixaorellana]

Apologies for the tardy response to your kind words, ladies.

Thank you so much, NYCGirl. Yes, I was pleased with that reflection picture. It was one of those that, even as you're snapping, you think "oh this will never come out the way I'm seeing it". But it did!

And *preen* thanks for the nice compliment. I'm directing my publicists to shoot me in a dark bathroom from now on, & to stop messing with all that gauze over the lens.

Re: dresses :: something you'd like is right across the street from Sto. Domingo. It's a clothing store with modern takes on the traditional clothes -- things like short fitted sheaths with halter bodices done in Tehuantepec embroidery, for instance.

Lugg, I'm so sorry! Your confusion was completely my fault. That convent/monastery terminology confused me for ages, then I went & used it here. For whatever reason, all of these former homes of monks are referred to as ex-conventos, even though the word monasterio exists in Spanish.

So glad you enjoyed the report. I guess the Moorish influence in Spain carried over to the new world. Also pleased that you liked the boats. Here's an article about them. Google Translate does okay with it, if you don't read Spanish, but honestly, I was quite happy seeing them without any explanation.

The gardens are somewhat problematic. At present they can only be visited on one of the very few tours, presented in English or in Spanish. Many tourists never get to see the gardens, as the tours don't work out for their schedules. I went a couple of years ago & was sorely disappointed. I'd opted for the English-language tour because it was twice as long (2 hours) as the Spanish one. The guide was most unpleasant, keeping us standing in the sun as she went on forever about proto-corn, then having us gallop to the next overly long lecture stop. There was no strolling or deviating allowed & she was grumpy -- rude, even -- about any garden questions outside her field of interest (ethno botany). I need to go back & do the tour in Spanish, which may be much nicer.

I was passing by the entrance to the gardens day before yesterday & stopped in to ask about the open day that's coming up in July. I also asked everyones favorite question: why can't the gardens be open to the public all the time, with enough guards around to prevent pilfering and vandalism? Apparently, that's the long range plan for "when the gardens are finished". They've been open since 1998, for heaven's sake.

Anyway, some pictures of the garden from that visit on June 7, 2011 ~

[lugg]

Thank you Bixa - what a shame that you had such a poor time with the guide in the gardens , hopefully they will open them up to the public. Is pilfering a real or imagined threat ?

The building is just so lovely, the sheen on the walls is fabulous. I too liked the doors , but also my eye was drawn to the modern bench which also looked like a nice piece.

The colourful pics at the end of stunning. And of course it is nice to meet you visually too. Yep, I am in agreement with Tod and Htmb what a lovely place and one I would love to visit

[Deleted]

It is always a pleasure to read one of your remarkably thorough reports, Bixa. That was a very Lucky break to come out when the dancers were being filmed -- but then again, you have so many more possible festivals than the rest of us, so it isn't fair. ;D

I don't know how long I could last if I had to carry a big basket on my head!

[bixaorellana]

Thank you, Lugg. I would be so thrilled if you made it here. I'd love to meet you to take you around & to visit some new places with you. You made me go back to look at the bench, which I'd only glanced at & not really appreciated before.

I imagine pilfering & breakage is a problem in all public gardens. The green house in City Park in New Orleans was once almost wiped out by thievery. But keeping people out of the gardens hardly seems a solution. Since it's a type of museum, really, letting people stroll and appreciate with a few guards around just as there are in museums is the logical answer. A little known aspect of the Sto. Domingo gardens is that there are plants for sale there. You have to get someone to take you to the greenhouse & nursery area, but often you're left alone for a while, making it more of a being-in-the-garden experience.

Thanks so much, Kerouac. As far as the Lucky Break goes, so much goes on in front of the church that mostly I don't bother taking pictures, figuring you all have already seen it all. Here's a case in point, which I'm including because it shows the whole area in front of the museum & church: Reply #456, 2nd video.

Note it's the women who have to bear those baskets!

[bixaorellana]

Whoo-boy! I keep coming up with new things that need to be added to this thread, but have put off adding them because so many photos had disappeared due to their hosting site going under.

Recreating my thoughts & sequence decisions from months ago was a challenge, but I've re-loaded over one hundred pictures, with a little extra helping of botanical garden shots.

But moving right along, here are some new additions, with more on the way.

First, here is a fly-over photo I found online. Note that the low green building in the upper left roughly marks North:

And, believe it or not, I found the hokum being filmed in Reply #62.
Keep your eyes wide open at 2:27 or you'll miss it ::


Stay tuned for a exhibition in the museum and a wedding in the church.

[htmb]

This thread appears to be absolutely lovely, Bixa. I have only looked at part of the first page and the video at the end to see this will be a great read, and with promises of more additions, to boot! Thank you for putting it back together for us.

[htmb]

Of course, once I got to the section about the trees dying I knew I'd seen this thread before, but I don't recall seeing the beginning with your amazing pictures if the good interior of the church. So MUCH gold!!!!

[Deleted]

I love well done tourism videos.

[bixaorellana]

Thanks, Htmb. I'll be showing a return to the church with a better camera, so more that glitters is on the way.

Hm, Kerouac. That could be taken two ways!

In June I went to the Louvre. Okay, not really, but the Louvre almost came to me.
I was not only looking forward to seeing these treasures of ancient Greece, but wondering how they'd look in the setting of the old monastery. Let's go ::













Besides the interesting timeline presentation at the end of the exhibition area, there were several smaller versions at the entrance to it. And man, were they loud. I would have liked to have seen a couple of them, but the volume meant that the blurred sound was echoing off the walls of the entire building. I went to the office to complain about it and was told that others had complained as well, but "the engineer" who took care of the sound wasn't there at the moment. What?! Is he like a priest, with only his thumb & forefinger sanctified to grasp the volume knob? It was really a shame to have obnoxious and distracting noise in what should have been a serene setting.

                     

                                            

          

                     

                                

[bixaorellana]

I was quite charmed by these small plaques.
According to the placard, it's conjectured that they might have been hung from trees near rustic shrines.

          

          

[bixaorellana]

                     

This ceiling gives a great cave-like feeling to the timeline presentation ~

Wending my way back out, I can't help but be struck by how comparatively childish the ornamentation over this door seems, althought it's from centuries later than the glories I've just seen.

[bixaorellana]

And in just a few steps, we're back in the 16th century AD.




There are some explanatory and interactive stations under the arches.














Bye, Hon -- see you next time!

[bixaorellana]

Some of the ceramics are worthy of closer scrutiny. For instance, I absolutely love the lines in that little fragment with the seated woman and her attendants. To see any of the photos from this exhibition section more closely, go here: www.flickr.com/gp/17499332@N00/36so26/

In order to see the full sized pic on Flickr, you have to click on that little down-pointing arrow in the lower right of the black border surrounding the photo, then choose "view all sizes". A new page will open where you can choose Original, the largest size.

[htmb]

What an absolutely gorgeous setting for these lovely Greek treasures. Beautifully photographed by you, too, Bixa!

[Deleted]

Bixa, this is one of the most beautifully, comprehensive, incredibly well documented reports I have yet to see on here.
I don't know where to begin.
You really went above and beyond...and below...!
Bravo and thank you!

[fumobici]

This is a wonderful addition to an already outstanding topic. It always astonishes me that there are buildings going back so far in North America. Up here in the PNW, the oldest are only around 150 years, and it feels a bit flat historically as a result.

[Deleted]

You're really lucky to have seen all of that stuff from the Louvre, because we never got to see the fabulous Mexican treasures when the Franco-Mexican cultural year was cancelled. But I guess it has been pencilled back in for the future, maybe in about 10 years. Such things are prepared so many years in advance that when you lose the window of opportunity, it is gone for a long, long time.

[htmb]

I've found myself looking at these last several photos and wondering if perhaps I saw many of them at the Louvre. The last time I was there was maybe two summers ago and I spent a good part of the day exploring several of the less tourist-visited rooms. I'm pretty sure the area I got lost in was the Greek section because it was so large. I had a fairly lousy camera with me, so didn't many photos at all. How wonderful to have much of the collection come to you in Oaxaca to be displayed in such a marvelous space, Bixa!

[bixaorellana]

Thank you all so much for your attention to this thread & for the kind comments.

Htmb, as always, I hugely appreciate your encouragement in my photographic endeavors. And yes. it is a great setting for those pieces, isn't it?

Casimira, what a lovely thing to say -- thank you! And I'll take that as the go-ahead to keep adding to this thread as appropriate opportunities arise.

Thanks so much, Fumobici. My brother-in-law, from Colorado. said much the same thing when visiting Louisiana. However, that may be because as Americans we are somewhat Euro-centric and tend to think of history manifesting itself in the form of venerable buildings. Really, the western part of the US has a rather dazzling history, but rather more part of the land itself, so not so readily revealed.

Kerouac, of course I hope that France gets to see the Mexican treasures, but also of course feel it's time for you & the other anyporters to come see them in situ.

Interesting comment, Htmb, especially since I had wondered how the Louvre decided what to send. Also, the fact that they cheerfully lent out almost a hundred pieces gives an idea of how vast their collection must be.

[bixaorellana]

And now, in keeping with my comment to Casimira above, I am going to add to this thread. This post will be picture-free as it's #89 in the thread & I want to jump to the next page so that all the photos and text will be together.

Onward!