Notre Dame de Reims

The cathedral at Reims is one of the things that hits so many of my geek spots - history, French monarchy, Gothic architecture, art - that it's kind of amazing I didn't make it until now.  You can probably imagine how excited I was to get there, I'd been waiting a long time for this!

The facade appears quite high Gothic, with every space covered in statues and carvings.  They really are exquisite examples of Gothic art and architecture.

Compare those shots with the facade of the abbey in the previous post and marvel at how decorated this thing really is.

The story goes that way back in around 500AD the Frankish (a Gallic-Celtic tribe that held some of the north and east of modern France) king Clovis married Clotilde, who converted him to Catholicism.  He was the first Christian king in the area, even though most of the people were already Christianized.  St Remi (Remigius) baptized him at Reims and since then all French kings have come back there to be coronated.  This ceremony was an important part in establishing the king's legitimacy - Joan of Arc's desperately tried to get the not-yet-coronated king to English-held Reims so the people would recognize him as king, a key part in her turning the tide of the Hundred Years' War.

During the Revolution of course this cathedral, with its ties to the monarchy, was targeted by revolutionaries, but they did not destroy much given the circumstances.  The true destruction of the cathedral came during WWI, when the Germans bombed it to try to lower French morale.  Our tour guide said the cathedral received more the 300 points of damage, but that doesn't really begin to convey the amount of destruction.

This is an overhead shot of what was left after the bombing: there is no roof, the nave is mostly intact but the transept (arms of the cross) and top of the cross are largely destroyed.  You can see the pillars that were holding up to roof, but most of the buttresses are gone.  Compare to the lower shot of one of the early shells hitting the cathedral.

In the aftermath, many people did not want to try to rebuild the cathedral - either because they thought it simply couldn't be done because there was too much damage, or they wanted to leave it as a monument to the war.  Some prominent French sculptors of the time (including Rodin) were quoted as advising against rebuilding.

Given the state of France and its economy at the time, it couldn't have been done, anyway.  But John Rockefeller came along and took a strong interest in the cathedral; he paid many millions to have it rebuilt, and twenty years later, incredibly, it was done.  You can see in the above pictures of the facade some pieces that are much lighter than others - these are copies of the original, damaged pieces which are housed in the Tau Palace now.  Seeing the amount of damage of the cathedral it kind of blows my mind to think that it's now almost back to what it was.  However, they can no longer ring the main heavy church bells on a regular basis because the structural damage to the cathedral would not allow such vibrations.

So we signed up for a tour of the cathedral, not really knowing what was involved.  When we got there we found out the tour was actually of the upper levels, meaning we had to go up the 240 spiral stairs to the top!  While it was awesome to see everything up close it was quite the climb.

Our tour group was little - only us and a Dutch family.  At the beginning of the tour it was evident that the Dutch family didn't know much French, though they did know English, and the tour guide didn't know English well enough to do the whole thing in that language.  He dithered a bit before asking if I could translate for him - it was the first time I've done a long real-time translation for someone and although at times it was sort of difficult (translating some of the architectural terms is way beyond me and I always have trouble with large numbers in French, like years) I think I did well.  It was fun, even, and the tour guide was very nice and personable, probably a couple of years younger than me.

He took us to the gallery, the part in between the second level of the building and the towers.  We got beautiful views of the city and good looks at many of the details up there.  Of course, my mother was delighted that we were so close to the gargoyles, which she loves.

The second picture is looking up at the towers from directly underneath them, and the second is looking across at the Kings' Gallery.  They aren't of specific kings but allegorical representations.  The roof is lined with the fleur-de-lys you can see in the last picture, which represent the monarchy of France.

We both really enjoyed the tour, as it gave a lot of interesting information (which I absorbed doubly, I think, after translating everything) and allowed us to see things we definitely would not have otherwise.

After climbing back down the stairs, we were on our own to explore the main part of the cathedral.  It's huge and gorgeous. 

One of the most interesting aspects of this cathedral is its stained glass windows.  Many were, of course, destroyed during the war, but many also did survive.  Prominent artists of the time were called in to design new windows to replace the ones that were destroyed.  So we get windows in very different styles:

The first two are modern and the last is original.  Most of the modern windows, as you can see above, are abstract designs, with none of the traditional bible stories or representation of saints.

However, the most beautiful and impressive of the modern windows, those done by Marc Chagall, are illustrations of stories.  I wish I could describe how gorgeous these windows are but I can't really do them justice.  The pictures will have to do:

The colors are simply breathtaking and I love the lines.  I don't know why these windows aren't more remembered as masterpieces of Chagall's.

Even with all the modern sensibility here it's easy to imagine the medieval kings of France coming here in state to be crowned.  I can hardly say I've seen a more impressive and interesting cathedral, save for perhaps Chartres and maybe Notre Dame de Paris.  Since I will be here for the next year I definitely plan to go back and spend most of my time just at the cathedral, as unfortunately we had to rush it a bit to fit other things in.