As I’ve mentioned before, the center of ancient Gallic and Roman Paris was the island in the middle of the Seine River known as the Île de la Cité, and not surprisingly for symbolic and practical reasons when the city became the capital of the kingdom of France, the royal palace was located there. The…
Category: Europe
Posts about European cities
The Pantheon, Paris
The Pantheon in Paris, named after the one in Rome, has gone through so many identity changes over the centuries that it’s hard to keep track. You can read about that elsewhere. However, it’s the perfect domed church-like structure to examine in the history of architecture right after the domed chapel of the Invalides, which…
Les Invalides
I caught this view of the dome of the Invalides through the trees of the gardens of the Rodin Museum, which is a must-see when you’re visiting Paris. Designed by Jules Hardouin-Mansart, the structure serves as a critical step in the development of domes in Western architecture. The domed church was part of a larger…
Cathedral of St. Louis, Blois
Heading back to the town of Blois for a bit, we look at the Cathedral of St. Louis, an interesting mix of old and newer additions. Portions date from Gothic style all the way up to the Seventeenth Century and the Baroque. Which brings me to an interesting revelation; after the Gothic, French ecclesiastic architecture…
Notre Dame of Chartres, Interior
Well then, they’ve been doing a bit of interior decorating on the inside of Chartres Cathedral, and generating quite a bit of controversy in the process. Needless to say, the newly cleaned and painted walls are a dramatic change to what to what generations of particularly older art historians were accustomed. Of course, it has…
Notre Dame of Chartres, Exterior
Heading out early in the morning from Paris, I took the train out into the southwest reaches of what is known as the Île-de-France, my destination the Cathedral of Chartres. Heavy fog blanketed the countryside and was just starting to lift when I reached the town of the same name. As I exited the train…
Notre Dame of Reims, Interior
The interior of Reims Cathedral is breathtaking, with long vistas viewed from the front doors towards the high altar far in the distance in the choir. The groin vaulting high overhead is uniform and rhythmic, with finely cut stone giving the sense of an almost perfect work of masonry. The high altar, like many in…
Notre Dame of Reims, Exterior
It was sort of a cloudy, gloomy day when I visited Reims Cathedral, which is also dedicated to Notre Dame, Our Lady the Virgin Mary. But it is such a striking edifice that it is hard not to enjoy the beauty of the church regardless of the weather. One of the largest cathedrals in the…
Notre Dame of Paris, Under Reconstruction and the Cluny Museum
No trip to Paris would be complete without a visit to Notre Dame, which simply means “Our Lady” in French, and as such, there are perhaps thousands of churches in the Francophone world with that name. Our Lady obviously refers to the Virgin Mary. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know the cathedral…
Cathedral Basilica of St. Denis
I saw six cathedrals when I was in Paris and the surrounding environs. First up is the former abbey church and now Cathedral Basilica of St. Denis. It was once out in the country north of Paris but is now deep in the larger metropolitan region and has a thriving immigrant community. There was heavy…