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…
Tag: Cathedrals
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…
Some Random Impressions of France
First off, perhaps I would like to start off with some impressions of Paris, and France in general. This was my twelfth trip to Europe, but my first to France. Many people were surprised that I had never been, and that was a major reason I chose to finally go. As I remarked to someone,…
Back from Paris and Northern France with over a Thousand Photographs
While certainly I wanted to show off the beauty of Dutchtown for two weeks, that was also cover for the fact I was traveling in Europe for over a week, specifically in Paris and throughout northern France. I took over 1,000 photos, which is slacking off a bit considering I took over 2,400 photos back…
Lindell Boulevard from North Boyle Avenue to Kingshighway
Proceeding further west on Lindell Boulevard, we see both well-preserved stretches of historic architecture and utterly obliterated streetscape. There are those stunning townhouses, which I would love to own if I didn’t have to worry about a car driven by a man-child flying into my living room every day. And then there’s the former of…
Odds and Ends from the Winter of 2022
Occasionally I build up some photos that don’t really go with anything else, and I present them to you here. Above is a nice house on Lemp Avenue across from the brewery that is now an AirBnB. For the longest time, it was a band practice space. Moving across the old St. Louis Commons to…
Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Interior
The interior of the cathedral is a simple, basilica style church with no transepts or side aisles, and a rectangular apse at the end, flanked by two colonnades in the Ionic order. The high altar is dominated by a huge mosaic of the Madonna of the Immaculate Conception, with the Latin Inscription, “There is no…
The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Exterior
The exterior of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception follows the Doric Order, in an interesting late, or as I might call it, terminal Beaux-Arts interpretation of the Greek Revival designed Joseph William McCarthy. Of course, it is architecture adapted for the modern world, as Greek temples did not have windows, whether on the side…
Campus of the Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Springfield
The story of how the Diocese of Springfield came into being is perhaps a story of how the locus of social, economic and political power has migrated around the State of Illinois over the last two hundred years. It was originally the Diocese of Quincy, founded in 1853, reflecting the primacy of the Mississippi River,…