Bleak Winter Gazebo, no Pleasure-Dome. Coleridge in Groningen, The Netherlands

nobody@flickr.com (Rana Pipiens) — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 03:31:06 -0800

It's Bleak Winter in Groningen with no reminder even of the Sun. Walking a bit anyway in the Noorderplantsoen, I saw everything in black and chilly white, or rather grays.
Always when I take this, a favorite walk and pass by this rectangular gazebo, a bit anomalously called in Dutch 'De Muziekkoepel' (= Music Rotunda), I'm reminded of poet-philosopher Samuel Tayler Coleridge's (1772-1834) lines:

"In Xanadu did Kublah Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea."

The Noorderplantsoen here was established on what was in the early seventeenth century constructed as about 7 kilometers of new bulwarks and fortifications around Groningen. Recently independent from the Habsburgs, Groningen yet was afraid of attacks from foreign powers. One of these was Denmark, which had been put in its place by other powers - among which the Hanseatic towns of Bremen and Groningen - on and near the Sound who resented the levies the Danish king demanded of ships passing through to the Baltic.
Whatever the case, in the late nineteenth century these fortifications were technically outdated and no longer useful. It was decided to raze them and to put in their place wonderful town gardens: the Noorderplantsoen. In the former Jat-Bulwark, a cupola was erected for musical performances; a kind of bandstand. Its rounded form made way for this square, Art-Nouveau structure around 1910.
A lovely place in Spring, Summer, Fall, and even Winter when the sun is out. The entire town, as it were, takes the air here. But now it's a dreary place... a 'sunless sea' atmosphere. Not for me
- quoting Coleridge again:

"For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drank the milk of Paradise."

Oh, Yes! For those interested: the little artificial hill in back is about 14 metres high; the bulwarks themselves originally rose to around 10 meters. In those days, of course, there were no trees on these fortifications; they would only have obscured to the spying eye of the city's protectors any inimical forces approaching over the polders surrounding the city.

Uploads from Rana Pipiens, tagged rotunda, with geodata

Bleak Winter Gazebo, no Pleasure-Dome. Coleridge in Groningen, The Netherlands