Cathedral
Notre Dame
de Paris
Metro : Cité or Saint-Michel
Photographies from Doug and
Pat, tenants/friends in Studio Saint-Germain and Mazarine september
2003.
The Cathedrale de Notre-Dame itself is so much photographed,
painted and sketched that, seeing it even for the first time, the edge
of your response may be somewhat dulled by familiarity. In recent
years, however, workers have paintstakingly removed decades of dirt,
grime, pollution and pigeon droppings, and the results are almost
startling. Now a gleaming alabaster, it is truly impressive. The great
H-shaped west front, with its strong vertical divisions, is
counterbalanced by the horizontal emphasis of gallery and frieze, all
centered on the rose window - a solid, no-nonsense design that
confesses
its romanesque ancestry. For a more fantastical kind of Gothic, look
rather at the north transept façade, with its crocketed gables
and huge fretted window-space.
Notre-Dame was begun in 1160 under the auspices of Bishop de Sully
and
completed around 1345. In the nineteenth century, Viollet-le-Duc
carried out extensive renovation work. He added the steeple and
baleful-looking gargoyles, which you can see close up if you brave the
ascent of the towers, and he remade most of the statuary - the entire
frieze of Old testament kings had been damaged during the revolution by
enthusiasts who took them for the kings of France.
Inside, the immediately striking feature is the dramatic contrast
between the darkness of the nave and the light falling on the first
great clustered pillars of the choir. It's the end walls of the
transepts that admit all this light, nearly two-thirds glass, including
two magnificent rose windows colored in imperial purple. These, the
vaulting and the soaring shafts reaching to the springs of the vaults
are all definite Gothic features, yet, inside as out, there remains a
strong Romanesque element in the stout round pillards of the nave and
the general sense of four squareness. Free guided tours take
place in french every sunday at 5pm, plus four masses on sunday morning
and one at 6h30pm. The trésor is not really worth the entry fee.
10 mn walking from Studio
Marais , rue du Bourg-Tibourg,
15 mn walking from Apartment Place des Vosges,
in the heart of le Marais.
