I was always interested in architecture. Building stuff. I liked small “a” architecture best. Little pink houses, for you and me. Vernacular housing for regular people is durn interesting in many parts of the world.

However, when you study architecture in a formal setting, they don’t give a fig for little houses for regler people. They like public buildings, big apartment buildings, office towers, and other big, honking structures. I’ve seen lots of examples of every sort of architecturally important structures from all over the world. Forever and a day, I’ve always assumed that the Sainte-Chapelle, in Paris, France, was, and would always be, the most outrageous polychrome building in the world. Boy was I wrong. More on that later.

First, let’s look at Sainte-Chapelle, shall we? Here’s a picture of the interior of the nave from their own website. See what I mean?

Ste. Chapelle is Gothic, of course, but the term “Gothic” covers a lot of ground. In France, there were four different eras of Gothic architecture. This is the best example of Rayonnant architecture I know of. Rayonnant is the third of four Gothic styles, and was superseded by the Flamboyant style, which is less flamboyant than the Rayonnant style, if you ask me. Flamboyant stuff was fascinated with intricate tracery and lots of weird ribwork on the ceilings. But laying on all the tracery kind of smothered the buildings. They begin to look more like coral reefs than architecture to my eye. Rayonnant minimized the structural stuff, loaded up with outrageous stained glass, opened up the interiors, and generally looked like you were standing in a kaleidoscope. Great stuff. Here’s another look at the interior:

I’ve never been there, but even in photos, it’s kinda staggering. When I was a kid, I thought I’d go there someday and stagger around in it, but it was not to be. I’ll never darken France’s doorstep, or their hotel towels. But I’ll assuage my disappointment with the knowledge that they’ve come in second in the outrageous polychrome dustcatcher sweepstakes. I’ve discovered the Meenakshi Temple in India, and it’s a doozy:

It’s a whole neighborhood of these polychrome whathaveyous. If you go over to the Wikiup, they’ve got hi-res images you can really zoom in on. That’s handy, if you don’t have any magic mushrooms and want to get transcendental anyway.

You can click right here to go to the Wiki page and poke around. Here’s another one:

I dare you to got through the links and zoom in on the pictures. Here’s one. Monty Python’s animator has got nothing on these guys:

The interior of these shrines are another kind of outrageous:

Well, if I ain’t going to Paris, I’m certainly not going to Madurai, India, so they can rest easy. I will, however, scratch my head and wonder why anyone wants to see the Taj Mahal for its architecture when this place is (figuratively) right down the street. It makes the Taj Mahal look like the Garage Mahal, doesn’t it?