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| Front door, Notre Dame Cathedral |
From afar, Notre Dame is an impressive beauty, but it is
not until you get close that you see the fine details that took so many
centuries of work to build. Statues of
saints, kings and great deeds line the archways and flourish up what would
otherwise be a flat gray facade. Here
and there are little unique flourishes, such as a demon weighing one side of a
scale in favor of himself while Jesus looks on, or a saint holding his head in
his arm. In the middle are statues of
the kings of Juddah, famously beheaded during the French Revolution when the
cathedral was turned into a “Temple of Knowledge.”
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| Detail of one of the doors |
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| This is Saint Denis, legend holds he picked up his head and kept on walking. |
Thankfully, the Cathedral has been spared fires,
revolutions, the ravages of war and the wrecking ball in her long and
auspicious reign as queen of Paris. Most
people only know of Quasimodo when they think of the church, but the hunchback
was merely a blink in the lifespan of this awesome place of stone and
glass.
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| Kings of Juddah |
Words alone cannot express the majesty of the
sanctuary. In Japan I saw structures
made of wood, carved by craftsman over many years. This place has stone that took centuries to
stack, let alone carve. The newest
things are older than the discovery of the Americas, and the oldest date from
far before the Roman times.
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| Cathedral Hall |
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| Closer look towards the sanctuary |
Stepping into the cathedral, one is met with a long hall,
and the eyes drift along the length of that hall, and then up and up to the
ceilings by the stained glass windows that punctuate everything with
multicolored light.
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| Silhouette against the glass |
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| Detail of one of the Windows. Each of these little points of color is a separate pane of glass in its own right. |
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| The ceiling ... I felt like I was in a Tolkein book |
The ceiling must
have been a good 100 – 200 feet in the air, all supported by these immense
pillars and arches. The breath is
stolen away in an instant, and all voices drift to an eerie whisper,
interrupted only by occasional singing or an awkward cough. Even these things echo loud as thunder
within this place.
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| Jean of Arc |
It is not just the stones but the light which captures
the eye. The windows are stories in
themselves, each detail a thousand facets of color telling tales from the
bible. The cathedral makers knew the
power of light upon the viewer, and one can imagine humble peasants who first
stepped in here and gazed in utter awe upon this holy sea. Indeed, the rests on the carvings of saints
and apostles, lending them a very divine looking aura.
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| Details of the life of Christ |
I was fascinated by the carvings, and while I
contend that some pale in comparison to the ones I saw in Nikko, I had to
imagine the hours … no years of painstaking work it took to make these. Everywhere I looked there was some beautiful
thing be it a statue, a window, the floor, the ceiling itself. Sometimes it was the sound of the bells,
echoing like an exclamation through the hall.
I would safely say that ninety percent of the experience is the glass. The best way I could describe it is like
standing inside a jeweled box with light filtering in from the outside and over
yourself and everything around you. In this moment of light, stone and silence the sanctuary is very much the womb of this great, gray lady.
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| One of the Rose windows. These were by far the most spectacular of all the other windows. |
Unfortunately, Notre Dame does have her downsides. The inside has a number of very touristy
souvenir shops just like at some of the temples in Japan. While there many of the shops were outside
the temples proper, here the merchants sold their wares INSIDE the
sanctuary. I could almost picture Jesus
himself standing there and shaking his head to see it.
We took our time in the heart of the church, and then
went outside and down into the crypts below the cathedral. Here there are the remains of ancient Roman
ruins on which the cathedral was built.
The Romans had a fortification on the island, perhaps the first
civilized settlement on the Seine.
Indeed, the courtyard plaza in front of the church is “point zero” for
the entirety of the city.
There was a second line up into the tower, so we decided
to go while the getting was good and make our way into the offices of Quasimodo
himself. The bell towers of Notre Dame
are an entity of their own. Reaching
them is not for the handicapped or feint of heart because you have to wind up
hundreds upon hundreds of narrow, winding stone steps. Going around and around like this with no
sense of any direction, it’s not hard to get dizzy or winded, or both.
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| Just to give an idea how narrow the stairs are and how they wind down |
Pausing on the upper level, we saw the round doors which
they must use to lift the bells when changed. I
had hoped to catch a glimpse of the belfry from Victor Hugo’s
“Notre Dame” or “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” to us westerners. The current bells are brand new, though we never saw any of them while in the towers. I was satisfied with what I did see
though.
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| Bell Door |
The views of the city from the church are views of places
and people that seem so very small and distant. There is a sense of loneliness up there,
even if you are with a group of other people.
Your companions are the gargoyles, who sit and stare down upon the
peoples of Paris. They seem to ponder
simple mortal lives while they themselves are immortal by comparison.
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| Thoughts of Paris |
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| View towards the city |
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| Each of these fellows has such a personality |
Reaching the top of the highest towers, past hundreds
more steps worn down in the middle by hundreds of travelers, one cannot help
but exclaim “thank God!” A visitor
stands on the precipice of a lead lined roof pockmarked with the carvings of
many people who came before.
Occasionally there are the toll of bells, which deafen the ears, but
otherwise there is no sound except wind or distant street noises. Paris spread before me beneath the cloudy
skies, like a lady with arms wide open to embrace.
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| Eiffel Tower from Notre Dame |
Looking out over it all in that moment, I was overwhelmed
and inspired. This was only our first
day, just the first few hours and it felt like I had seen so much. Perhaps it was the stairs combined with
jetlag, but once we were down again I declared I never wanted to see stairs
again. I was to be sorely
disappointed....
