Today I took the metro to the Hôtel de Ville (city hall) and
walked across a bridge over the Seinne to Île de la Cité to see the Cathedral
Notre Dame. The exterior of the building
itself is, of course, iconic, but what many photographs fail to show are the
intricate sculptures carved into it. Not
just the famous talking gargoyles providing comic-relief for Disney adaptations
of R-rated epic literature by Victor Hugo, but a dazzling array of religious
iconography, saints, maidens, and angels tromping on demons. Inside is marvelous. Beautiful architecture and paintings, the
choir singing, the feeling of hundreds of years of devotion that seems to
radiate from the stones… I arrived during a special Mass of Farewell to Brother
Pierre-Marie Delfieux, who was the founder of the Monastic Brotherhood of
Jerusalem. It was presided over by
Cardinal Andreé XXIII, the Arch-Bishop of Paris. I stayed to observe the mass out of respect
and because it has been a goal of mine
to offer worship in Notre Dame. On
display were the new bells of Notre Dame.
The oldest bell hangs in the south tower; named Emmanuel, it was hung in
1681 and is tuned to E♭. This is the giant one that rings out on the hour; it always rings
first and at least five seconds before the others. The north tower had four bells from the 19th-century,
which replaced the nine that were taken out during the Revolution. The bells used to be rung manually, before it
was discovered that, due to their size, when they were rung, the entire
structure would resonate, threatening the stability of the foundation. These four were taken down last year and
recast into a new set of eight, to be placed back into the north tower to
celebrate the 850th anniversary of Notre Dame. A ninth bell is currently being cast, called
Marie, and will be hung with Emmanuel in the south tower.
After seeing Notre Dame, I went to go see the Palais du
Justice, but stumbled across a subterranean exhibit that showed off an
archeological excavation. Inside, it
showed the remnants of foundations dating back to the Roman settlement Lutetia and Paris’s medieval days.
After that, I passed the headquarters of the Parisian police
department. On the wall there is a
plaque commemorating the actions of the police during the Second World
War. A few days prior to the liberation
of the city, the Parisian police and the remnants of the National Guard occupied
the police station and began an insurrection against the occupying Nazis. Elsewhere in the city, the Resistance began
their own insurgency to throw out the occupiers. Over 800 Parisians died in the fighting
throughout the city before French General Leclerc’s 2nd Armored
Division arrived to turn the tide and drive out the occupiers. It was a very dramatic history.
Continuing on, I went to Sainte-Chappelle, another cathedral
on the island within the Palais du Justice.
It is famous for its intricate stained glass windows. It was built between 1242 and 1248 in
accordance to the wishes of King Louis IX, a deeply religious king (later
canonized as Saint Louis) who wanted a place to store the relics of the Passion
of the Christ that he brought home from the crusades, the most famous being the
Crown of Thorns, which he purchased at a price which apparently far exceeded
the entire cost of building the cathedral.
They were housed in the upper chapel (the lower chapel was were the
staff of the nearby royal palace was allowed to worship), where worshipped the king,
his family, and the churchmen leading the service surrounded by amazingly intricate
stained glass windows. There are 1,113
scenes on 15 stained glass windows telling the story of mankind from Genesis
through the resurrection of the Christ.
My favorite was the giant rose-shaped set on the back wall giving an
in-depth account of the Apocalypse (the more-accurate French name for the Book
of Revelations). The relics used to be
housed in a shrine at the east end of the chapel (opposite the Apocalypse)
before a set of windows detailing the Passion of Christ (the events leading up
to his crucifixion), but the relics were moved during the Revolution to the
vault at nearby Notre Dame.
After that I bought a panini and strolled across the Seine
to the opposite bank where I paid a visit to Shakespeare & Company, a
bookstore named in honor of a bookshop/publishing company that was founded in
the period between the World Wars by an American ex-patriot named Sylvia
Beach. It was a gathering place for many
of the famous authors of that era, including Hemmingway, Ezra Pound, Gertrude
Stein, Man Ray, F. Scott Fitzgerald and James Joyce (but there is some
contention about the latter that my English major friends will be happy to tell
you about). The original was closed
during the Nazi occupation (there is a story that Beach had refused to sell a
German officer the last remaining original publication of Finnegan’s Wake). The
current shop was opened as a bookstore called Le Mistral in 1951. The proprietor
was George Whitman and his shop became a similar gathering place for the
literary Bohemians of post-war Paris, frequented by beatniks. After Beach’s death in 1964, Whitman changed
the name of his store to Shakespeare
& Company in her honor. The shop
contains a sleeping space with beds and it allows writers to live and work
there in order to support themselves as they write in Paris. After Whitman’s death, ownership passed to
his daughter, Sylvia Beach Whitman, who runs it much the same as her
father. She also organizes writers’
workshops and cultural literary events.
After lunch, I walked across the misleadingly named Pont
Neuf (new bridge), the oldest bridge
in Paris, back to Île de la Cité in order to find the Conciergerie, where
prisoners were held during the Revolution before going to face the Tribunal
(which would inevitably sentence them to the guillotine). It has housed Louis XVI and his family,
members of the aristocracy, leaders of the Revolution who had targeted by
Robespierre during his Reign of Terror, Robespierre himself (after attempting
suicide with a pistol in his mouth during his capture, I write “attempt”
because he missed and spent the last several hours of his life missing half of
his jaw, but he kind of deserved it), and American Thomas Paine (famous patriot
and author of Common Sense) who’s
life was saved due to his American citizenship.
Unfortunately for me, the Conciergerie was closed as they were in the
middle of changing exhibits and it will not reopen for another week.
After that I strolled through the Marais district. Once one of the ancient Jewish quarters, it
is now a fashionable shopping district and one of the most popular areas for
younger people to live in the city. I enjoyed
strolling past the boutiques, the district’s popularity was still young enough
that it wasn’t full of itself like other parts of the city have become. I went to the Musée Carnavalet, a history of
Paris from the latter days of the Bourbon Monarchy through the Revolution and days
of the Empire. Its collection focusses
mainly on artifacts. There is a good
deal of furniture, shop signs, paintings, busts, kitchenware, and personal
belongings such as the chess pieces of Louis XVI which he used to play while in
the Conciergerie awaiting his execution. They also had a model of the Bastille prison
carved out of a block taken from the actual fortress-prison when it was destroyed.
I then went to the nearby Place des Vosges, the oldest
public square in Paris. In a corner of
the arcade that encircles it is the Musée Victor Hugo: one of the places where
he lived that has since been turned into a museum. Victor Hugo, while known primarily in the
English speaking world as the author of Les
Misérables and Notre Dame de Paris
(the hunchback of Notre Dame), is most famous in France for his extensive
poetry and also for his work as a playwright and as a politician. He lived in the apartments at Place des
Vosges for over a decade until his exile (due to his politics and political
writing). In his novels, Victor Hugo is
known for his rather long and detailed asides.
He often uses entire chapters to describe the history and background of
just a part of the setting. In Les Misérables, he gives a long account
of the construction and layout of the Parisian sewer network. This essay is in fact longer than the entire
scene which is set there. This would be
a problem if it was not, in fact, just so darn interesting. In Notre
Dame de Paris (the hunchback of Notre Dame), he gives a long history of
what Paris used to look like as if it had been seen from an immense height
(such as the top of the cathedral). I
learned in my journey into the architectural excavation that archeologists had
used parts of his description to locate a starting point for their dig.
After that I wandered back through the Marais district to
the Centre Pompidou, which is an extraordinary looking building which appears
to have its insides on the outsides: pipes and tubes and clear-plastic
surrounded stair cases. After that I
went to Les Halles, which were for
over a thousand years the sight of Paris’s giant open-air wholesale meat,
produce, and artisanal market. In the
1970s, they were cleared out, moved to various outskirts of the city, and
demolished in favor of digging a giant trench and putting a modern shopping
mall in it. The people of Paris were
upset with this decision, because it looked so ugly (they called it “the great
ditch”). Thus, it has become a permanent
construction site as the city tries one thing after another to attempt to
beautify it, with little or no success.
It also the main metro hub of the city.
Fun fact.
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