Musée Saint-Raymond

Hello from Lourdes, France! My name is Robby Newell and I get the pleasure to be a part of this amazing trip and tell you all about the great places we get to see! This first location is from our first official city stop on the trip.

The Musée Saint-Raymond opened in Toulouse, France in 1892. It is an archeological museum that holds artifacts from early Roman, Celtics and Christian history. Most of these artifacts were labeled as “small antiquities”, but the collection continued to expand over the years with more and more archeological finds. One of these in particular are the sarcophagi and burial stones now housed in the museum. This section of funeral artifacts hold different meaning depending on who the deceased was and what they wanted said about them.

I thought these were incredibly cool and interesting to see. They were inscribed with different symbols that had specific meanings defining who each person was in life and who they want to be remembered as. For example, many of these sarcophagi were made for holy men and had the Chi-Rho symbol (the first two letters for Christ in Latin). They wanted to be remembered for their holy deeds, so their resting were made to tell this. It was intriguing and beautifully intricate. Definitely a must see if anyone makes their way on the camino.