The Cathedral of Notre Dame

Rising out of the silver waters of the Seine, like some regal vessel, haloed by the glowing rays of a rising or a setting sun, Notre-Dame, "the old queen of our cathedrals", diffuses her splendour all around, a spellbinding vision between water and sky. The picture above captures this image perfectly.


Between 1163 and 1345 man's yearnings for the divine were carved into her stone by hosts of anonymous artisans, who by some intuitive grace slipped imperceptibly from Romanesque to the Gothic style, yet managed to sustain her architectural unity and create a homogeneous masterpiece out of an infinite profusion of diversity and detail.


The Gothic loftiness of Notre-Dame dominates the Seine and the Ile-de-la-Cité as well as the history of Paris. On the spot where this majestic cathedral now stands, the Romans had built a temple to Jupiter, which was followed by a Christian basilica and then a Romanesque church.

Maurice de Sully, bishop of Paris, decided to build a new cathedral for the expanding population, dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Although construction started in 1163, it was not completed until roughly 180 years later in about 1345. One of the more interesting features that I like personally is that since it was built in an age of illiteracy, the cathedral retells the stories of the Bible in its portals, paintings, and stained glass. This is essentially how the populace of Paris learned about the life of Christ.

On completion of the choir in 1183, work was begun on the nave and completed in 1208, followed by the west front and towers in 1225-1250. A series of chapels were added to the nave during the period 1235-50, and to the apse during 1296-1330. Transept crossings were built in 1250-67 by Jean de Chelles and Pierre de Montreuil who was also the architect of the Sainte-Chapelle. The six-part rib vaults and the thin elements articulating the wall are typically Early Gothic.

Seen from the exterior, the building appears to be High Gothic. Notable features include the profusion of colonnettes and tracery screens, the horizontal and vertical ordering of the facades, the imposing size of the rose windows, and the delicacy of the flying buttresses which I try to capture with my pictures.

Notre-Dame has had an eventful history over the centuries. Crusaders prayed here before leaving on their holy wars, and polyphonic music developed in the cathedral. Notre-Dame was pillaged during the French revolution, as were a number of other cathedrals throughout France. Citizens mistook statues of saints above the portals on the west front for representations of their kings, and, in the midst of their revolutionary fervor, took them down. Some of these statues were found in the 1970s, almost two hundred years later, in the Latin Quarter. Many of the cathedral's other treasures were either destroyed or plundered — only the great bells avoided being melted down. The church interior was used as a warehouse for the storage of food.

It was also here that Napoléon, wishing to emphasize the primacy of the state over the church, crowned himself emperor, and then crowned Joséphine, his Martinique-born wife, as his empress. In an unheard of move he grabbed the throne from the Cardinal and placed it on his own head and then another on Josephine's head. It is normally the pope who crowns emperor's.

A restoration of the cathedral was carried out starting in 1844 and lasting 23 years. Besides bringing new life to the rose windows and the statues, the architect, Viollet-le-Duc, combined scientific research with his own very personal creative ideas and designed Notre-Dame's spire, a new feature of the building, and the sacristy. Also in the 19th century, Baron Haussmann evicted those Parisians whose houses cluttered the Cathedral's vicinity. The houses were torn down to permit better views of the edifice.

It is the art of Notre-Dame, rather than its history, that still awes. The west front contains 28 statues representing the monarchs of Judea and Israel. The portals depict the Last Judgment, the Madonna and Child, St. Anne the Virgin's mother and Mary's youth until the birth of Jesus. The interior, with its slender, graceful columns, is impressive — there is room for as many as 6,000 worshipers. The three rose windows — to the west, north, and south — are masterful, their colors a glory to behold on a sunny day and I was able to capture a few decent pictures although they will not allow tripods into the cathedral so I had to use a high ISO so I don't capture the true magnificence of these windows.

In 1768, geographers decided that all distances in France would be measured from Notre-Dame. One hundred and seventy-six years later, when Paris was liberated during World War II, General de Gaulle rushed to the cathedral after his return, to pray in thanksgiving. In many ways, Notre-Dame was and still is the center of France.

Life if Good ... enjoy

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