one, and, not sorry that our horses required rest, betook ourselves to the inspection of this very curious town.
It is entered by old gateways, and many of the streets are still full of ancient houses. The curious feature of the place is however its complete division into two quarters—the Protestant and the Catholic—the latter walled off, and entered by its own gates.[2] It occupies the upper part of the town, and contains in the cathedral church of S. Lucius an attraction for architects which has unusual merit and interest. Its plan consists of a nave of three bays, a choir of one bay raised by twelve steps above the nave, and a sanctuary much narrower than the nave and choir, and also of one bay. The steps from the nave to the choir are narrow and on each side, and between them is a very flat wide arch, under which access is obtained to the crypt, the floor of which is a few steps below the nave, and extends under the choir and sanctuary. The plan is, it will be seen, not unlike that of the Cathedral at Zurich, save that here there are no apsidal terminations at all.
A sketch of the interior of so singular a church cannot be uninteresting, and it will be seen from this that the whole is of the very earliest pointed work, and good of its kind; the crypt is supported in the centre by a column resting upon a grotesque animal. Two of the altars have fine shrines of metal of the thirteenth century, and two other altars have ancient pricket candlesticks, and there are some fine brass standard candlesticks also; the choir stalls are old, and there is a late triptych behind the high altar, and a very fine Sakramentshaus with metal doors just below the northern flight of steps to the choir, which reminded me of the very fine example in a similar position in the cathedral at Ulm. The altar is of stone of the thirteenth century, with five detached shafts in front, supporting the slab or mensa. The whole church is groined. It is worthy of notice that the choir makes a great bend out of the straight line towards the north—so much, indeed, that it is impossible to avoid noticing it as one enters the church. The steps from the nave to the choir lack dignity. But it is true that if they had been in the centre, and the entrances to the crypt on each side, the crypt would not have been seen, as it now is, from the nave, and a striking effect would have been lost. The west end has a fine round-arched doorway with several shafts in each jamb, above this a large window of the same character, and in the gable a small middle-pointed window. About ten feet in advance of the west doorway is a curious remnant of a gateway with piers and shafts resting upon monsters, looking, however, very much as though it had been removed from elsewhere.
Service commenced just as I was obliged to think of leaving the church; the priests wore red cassocks and tippets, and very short surplices edged with lace, and looked unclean and untidy; there was no one in the body of the church, and the sacristan, after the service had commenced, walked backwards and forwards about the choir, down the steps into the nave, and then—after a little attention bestowed on some matter there—out of the church. On a subsequent visit to this church (in 1872) I found repairs in progress, which bade fair to destroy some of its great archæological interest.
Descending from the melancholy and squalid-looking Catholic quarter, we soon came upon the Protestant church, dedicated in honour of S. Martin, which is now somewhat remarkable. It is old, but it has been plastered, whitewashed, and then painted by some original artist over its whole exterior, in an extraordinary imitation of all kinds of inconsistent architectural devices; pilasters, cornices, mouldings, tracery, and the like, are all boldly represented with black paint, and in such style that we all stopped the moment we saw it, struck by the conviction that it must be a scene from some play, so utterly absurd, flat, and out of all perspective did the whole look.
The situation of Chur is very lovely, placed as it is just at the point where the Schalfiker Thal joins the valley of the Rhine, and upon the steep and rugged bottom slope of the mountains.