Boulogne-sur-Mer

During my recent trip to Flanders, our group visited Calais and Boulogne-sur-Mer. Most impressive was Auguste Rodin's group Les Bourgeois de Calais (The Burghers of Calais).

Driving along the Côte Opale, we saw the white cliffs of Dover in the far distance and in the sunshine.

Following arrival in Boulogne-sur-Mer, our coach parked near the fishing harbor. My readers probably know that Red Baron likes lobster but what I saw cut my appetite. A fishmonger offered a mutilated lobster still alive and moving on a bed of crunched ice for 18 euros per kilo, and its right claw separated for 15 euros the kilo. This was not the place to linger.

We walked up Main Street to the old city. We again met French children on our way with their questionnaires visiting the historical place but English school classes too. The latter were without sheets of paper and instead had bought pink berets.

Boulogne's upper town is built at the place of the Roman castra, surrounded by a wall following the ancient perimeter. The typical two main streets run east-west and north-south, crossing in the middle. The four Medieval gates are at the position of the former Roman gates.

The castle surrounded by moats situated at the highest point of the hill dominating and controlling the lower city and harbor is strange. I was puzzled. Where did the rulers get the water to fill the ditches in times of simultaneous drought and attack? Nevertheless, the castle's construction is impressive, and the photo taken out of the moat from below of Boulognes' neo-baroque basilica is even more so.

The Basilica of Notre Dame is the other place to visit. According to a legend, a wood-carved sculpture of Mary with a Child reached the shore of Boulogne on a skiff guided by two angels. The city, already rich as a seaport and fishing harbor, became even more prosperous as a place of pilgrimage. The original church Our Lady of the Sea, where Mary's effigy was worshipped, was completely destroyed during the French Revolution, and the rubble was sold as a building material. In 1801 Boulogne lost its bishop seat, becoming part of the bishopric of Arras.

Our Lady of the Sea, the statue with miraculous powers

 In the early 1820ies Benoît Haffreingue, a local priest, driven by divine inspiration, pushed for the construction of a new church that was eventually erected as a basilica in neo-baroque style.

Benoît Haffreingue offers his church to Our Lady

There were only two drops of bitterness:
Haffreingue died in 1871 before he saw his church consecrated.
The episcopal seat was not returned to Boulogne, and the building never regained the cathedral status Haffreingue had prayed for.

PS: A day later, I had overcome my nausea for seafood. In Lille, I had oysters, a demi-douzaine, and a glass of Pouilly-Fumé for lunch.

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