Rome

There is no shortage of calligraphy examples in Rome. Indeed, this is where the Western calligraphy was born. The best examples of capitalis monumentalis, our earliest calligraphy style, are on the numerous imperial triumphal arches in the city. However, specimens of very elegant letters can be found in other places in the city, too. Here, for example, are broken stones gathered before the entry to the Baths of Diocletian, right in front of Rome's main railway station.

Bayeux Cathedral

The French town of Bayeux is best known for that medieval comic strip, Bayeux Tapestry, which is its main tourist attraction. The Romanesque cathedral, however, is also worth visiting. It even has something for a calligraphy enthusiast: the Gothic murals in the crypt, where figures talk to each other like in another medieval comic strip. An angel praises Mary in lombardic versals, while a pious monk prays for her intercession in textualis quadrata. There are also some epitaphs elsewhere in the church, one of my favoured is one from 1660 written in graceful antiqua

Cerne Abbas

This is a village famous for the obscene chalk figure cut into a hill nearby. The church is much less of a tourist attraction, but a calligraphy enthusiast may want to have a glance there - its walls are covered in quotations from the Bible written in blackletter calligraphy. Some inscriptions are dated 1679 and others 1701, which means it is baroque calligraphy, a result of an iconoclastic movement which made a sort of a cultural revolution in England. For a few years bands of angry Puritans went from village to village, entered churches and destroyed images. Churches were decorated in calligraphy afterwards, but the Cerne Abbas example shows that real artists were hard to find. The Cerne Abbas inscriptions are of poor quality, a far cry from what was produced at the same time in East Germany.

 

 

 

 

Bath

An ancient city, it was already a spa in Roman times. Today the Roman baths are the main tourist attraction. The little museum by the baths contains some tombstones with fine Roman calligraphy. Some are written in the classical Capitalis Quadrata, others in a similar, but slightly narrower style, that might perhaps be termed Capitalis Rectangularis. 

 

 

 

Benedictine Monastery in Tyniec

The Benedictine monastery in Tyniec (pron. Tyhnyets) stands on an isolated hill overlooking Vistula river. It is one of the oldest monastic establishments in Poland. The oldest part of the extant buildings are the cloisters; some Gothic textura inscriptions are visible there on the wall. Its present church is Baroque in style, one can see there some wall inscriptions in italics from the period. Artistically the best is, however, capitalis elegans from some epitaphs. 

 

 

A monument of a deer in Briesen

Briesen is a little town in East Germany, not far to the East of Berlin. The monument of a deer stands actually in a forest near the town. It comemorates a hunt of one of the rulers of Brandenburg. There is a date of the event within the inscription, so one may gather that the date of the inscription itself is aproximately the same. 

 

 

Tomb of queen Matilda and stained glass windows in abbey churches of Caen.

Caen was the capital of William the Conqueror before his conquest. Here he and his wife Matilda founded two great abbeys, one for women and one for men. Both abbeys are excellent examples of the Romanesque style of Normandy that led to the emergence of the Gothic architecture. There is not much calligraphy to be seen there at present, but what there is, is quite interesting.
The church of the Abbaye aux Dames has only one epitaph: that of the foundress, queen Matilda herself. It is a simple tombstone with only an inscription on it, it dates from late eleventh century. The letters are versals that seem to be Anglo-Saxon in style, which is perhaps not entirely surprising, as Matilda was the queen of England. The square "C" and "G", pointed "O", the broken cross bar of "A" and a bar at the top of the same letter bring to mind the incipit pages of such books as "Lindisfarne Gospels", but also books by the School of Winchester, closer in time. Interesting is the inconsistency: "E", "C" and "G" all appear sometimes square and sometimes round.
The church of St. Etienne of the Abbaye aux Hommes has no epitaphs at all, but it has interesting Gothic stained glass windows with some inscriptions in Gothic versals.