Musée de Histoire et d'Archéologie (Archaeological Museum)
The Cathedral is two short blocks to the east of the triangularly-shaped Grand' Place. Three and a half blocks in the other direction (from the Grand' Place, walk up the Rue des Maux to the Place de Lille, and turn right onto the Rue des Cannes) is the collection that supplements that of the Treasury, set in a former 17th-century pawnhouse on the Rue des Carmes—it completes the story. It contains a vast exhibit of Roman-Gallo relics and artifacts of the 1st through the 4th centuries, all excavated from the soil of Tournai as recently as the 1950s. See, in particular, those pieces from a luxurious Roman villa found in the city's district of La Loucherie. In successive rooms: stone sculptures of the following centuries, through the 14th. The highlights are those two exquisite crafts that brought fame to Tournai in more recent times: the priceless 15th-century tapestries of Tournai, and the equally precious, 18th-century Tournai porcelain and china—both producing the sharpest sense of awe and delight in visitors who normally don't have the slightest interest in tapestries or china.
The tapestries, all telling dramatic stories, are bold, colorful and immensely graphic; their stories flow and develop from one side of the great hanging cloths to the other, without division or grouping into separate scenes; one could stare at their detail for hours. Some are quite propagandistic: the Siege of Jerusalem, subtitled "The Revenge of the Savior", takes obvious glee from the sufferings and famine of the Jewish population surrounded by the Romans; we see, among other things, a famished mother cooking her newborn infant over a spit. Another depicts the courage of Charlemagne's officer, Roland, at the battle of Roncevaux; another the adventures of the Greek Argonauts led by Hercules, the feats of Hercules and Jason in the Trojan War. We are already witnessing the evolution of art towards secular, non-Biblical themes, though not yet divorced from ancient religious hatreds. Every tapestry here was made in ateliers of Tournai in the mid-to-late 1400s.
The artistic, 18th-century master-works of "faience"—the priceless porcelain china—are the other must sees, beautiful works that rely simply on the delicacy of color and form, the abstract beauty of swirling designs, the most basic flowers, birds and pastoral scenes (in cameo blue, in pale rose, in lavendar). In showcase after showcase of plates and cups that differ from anything we see today in even the finest store windows—quite literally soaring above the finest contemporary product of Messrs. Wedgwood or Rosenthal—we learn that any art is great when greatly pursued. For a short 120 years, from 1752 towards the end of the 1800s, the porcelain makers of Tournai pursued the art of producing and decorating porcelain with a zeal and skill no longer found in the world we know, and that even then, in other cities, was normally directed to great paintings or statues. In this field, as in metal, Tournai had few equals.
The Cathedral is two short blocks to the east of the triangularly-shaped Grand' Place. Three and a half blocks in the other direction (from the Grand' Place, walk up the Rue des Maux to the Place de Lille, and turn right onto the Rue des Cannes) is the collection that supplements that of the Treasury, set in a former 17th-century pawnhouse on the Rue des Carmes—it completes the story. It contains a vast exhibit of Roman-Gallo relics and artifacts of the 1st through the 4th centuries, all excavated from the soil of Tournai as recently as the 1950s. See, in particular, those pieces from a luxurious Roman villa found in the city's district of La Loucherie. In successive rooms: stone sculptures of the following centuries, through the 14th. The highlights are those two exquisite crafts that brought fame to Tournai in more recent times: the priceless 15th-century tapestries of Tournai, and the equally precious, 18th-century Tournai porcelain and china—both producing the sharpest sense of awe and delight in visitors who normally don't have the slightest interest in tapestries or china.
The tapestries, all telling dramatic stories, are bold, colorful and immensely graphic; their stories flow and develop from one side of the great hanging cloths to the other, without division or grouping into separate scenes; one could stare at their detail for hours. Some are quite propagandistic: the Siege of Jerusalem, subtitled "The Revenge of the Savior", takes obvious glee from the sufferings and famine of the Jewish population surrounded by the Romans; we see, among other things, a famished mother cooking her newborn infant over a spit. Another depicts the courage of Charlemagne's officer, Roland, at the battle of Roncevaux; another the adventures of the Greek Argonauts led by Hercules, the feats of Hercules and Jason in the Trojan War. We are already witnessing the evolution of art towards secular, non-Biblical themes, though not yet divorced from ancient religious hatreds. Every tapestry here was made in ateliers of Tournai in the mid-to-late 1400s.
The artistic, 18th-century master-works of "faience"—the priceless porcelain china—are the other must sees, beautiful works that rely simply on the delicacy of color and form, the abstract beauty of swirling designs, the most basic flowers, birds and pastoral scenes (in cameo blue, in pale rose, in lavendar). In showcase after showcase of plates and cups that differ from anything we see today in even the finest store windows—quite literally soaring above the finest contemporary product of Messrs. Wedgwood or Rosenthal—we learn that any art is great when greatly pursued. For a short 120 years, from 1752 towards the end of the 1800s, the porcelain makers of Tournai pursued the art of producing and decorating porcelain with a zeal and skill no longer found in the world we know, and that even then, in other cities, was normally directed to great paintings or statues. In this field, as in metal, Tournai had few equals.
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