Église Saint-Laurent
Pink-stone Romanesque church for fishermen, its plaza watched by a bronze acrobat and two bear cubs.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Eglise Saint-Laurent in Marseille opens on the bronze statue outside it, a young acrobat teaching two bear cubs to dance, modeled by sculptor Louis Botinelly on a real dockworker and a real cub named Nenette. It follows the statue from its 1911 unveiling into the German occupation, when Marseille's bronze statues were stripped for the war effort, and Botinelly's fight to save this one. Behind the statue stands the pink stone Romanesque church itself, built for the fishermen of the old port and later filled with Provencal music on summer evenings.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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