For a street that boasts one of the largest chunks of green space in the city, Queen’s Park Circle is not the most pedestrian-friendly avenue in town. Eight lanes of speeding traffic will do that.
[rssbreak]
If you happen to be on foot, however, the parts of the U of T campus that surround the circle offer up some tasty turn-of-the-20th-century architecture, as well as a few not-so-hidden surprises.
Joe Rosenthal’s weirdly hypnotizing Neighbours – the Rubenesque babes in bronze – comes out of nowhere from behind the black iron on the northeast corner. Helped by donations from generous benefactors, U of T’s dotted with thought-provoking and perplexing examples of public art.
But it’s the stone edifice, the backdrop to Rosenthal’s creation, that’s the unlikely scene-stealer.
In the harsh morning shadows, the beige walls of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies ooze intrigue. Must be the little Catholic I have left in me causing the reaction, cuz all of sudden I’m feeling like Nicolas Cage in National Treasure.
The plaque dedicated by Ontario Heritage out front is inscribed in Latin, as well as English and French.
Founded in 1929, the school holds a special place in the world of higher learning. Turns out Pope Pius XII had a hand in that, granting the school a papal charter in 1939 to offer doctoral degrees in medieval studies. It was 1939 and war was breaking out in Europe, threatening the storehouses of antiquities in European centres of learning. And so PIMS was born.
The institute’s library holds one of the largest collections of medieval documents on the continent, rivaling Harvard’s, the font of all things literary in North America.
Among the rarities are letters written by popes microfiches of several thousand printed books in the Vatican’s collection and ancient works of botany, with studies and paintings dating back to the late 16th century.
Don’t have to be a gardener, or Catholic, to appreciate this rarity.
