Reims, everything but the cathedral

My mom has gone after a lovely visit where she got to do a whole bunch of things she hadn't done yet.  We did lots of exploring but the most interesting place we went was definitely Reims.  

This is a place with a LOT of history. I don't know much about it Roman roots, but it must have been a significant place back in the day - the town museum was filled with all kinds of Roman stuff, from statues to mosaic fragments to mile markers to tombs, all from the immediate vicinity.  It even had a bunch of paleolithic archeological finds. 

The next main period of its history is the long medieval era, which I'll discuss more in the next post.  Reims was the place where every king of France was coronated, from Clovis on (except, it seems, Charlemagne and Hugh Capet for whatever reasons; see my post on Noyons).  It was therefore one of the most significant and symbolic places in the country for centuries.

Its importance in modern times comes mainly from the fact that it was a major target of German attacks during WWI.  The main cathedral, where all the kings were crowned, was purposefully bombed, and the rest of the town suffered major damage as well.  Again I'll discuss this more in the next post, but it certainly gives the town an interesting blend of medieval and very modern (a lot of art deco) sensibility.

It appears that soon after, Reims was a draw for artists?  I'm not entirely sure as I've done no research on it but we saw this cafe on the main restaurant row in town (the Ernest Hemingway if you can't see it):

And we ate dinner here:

A lot of the town looks like this:

Medieval combined with neo-classical - it seems the place had somewhat of a revival around the early to mid 18th century, when Louis XV took an interest in it.  The building in the background in the above shot is the Hotel de Ville, the city hall.

And there are the random nice examples of art deco, like the city library.  Andrew Carnegie gave a lot of money to Reims, I suppose in the 20s, and funded the building of this library.  It's really very cool.

Next stop on our way was the Palais Tau, the cathedral museum.  It was the residence of the archbishop of Reims until the early 1900s, but it was used as a storage area for all the bits and pieces of the cathedral that fell or broke during the WWI bombing.  In fact it still holds large number of fragments:

You can see the mix of statues, stones, and architectural details there.

It also now holds a wide variety of items pertaining to the cathedral and the coronations.  It had a lot of tapestries that used to be in the archbishop's palace, replicas of statues and carvings from the cathedral (notice how the gargoyle below is a cement cast, not stone), the post-coronation banquet room, and a little chapel.  This museum also has a lot of royal relics, gold, and jewels (some replicas), many of them from the coronation of Charles X in 1824.  He was the younger brother of Louis XVI, who was guillotined during the Revolution, and the last true king of the royal line, and the last to be coronated there.

There are vaults under the palace with a lot of information about the reconstruction of the cathedral and some very striking photos of it when it was bombed.  I'll try to find some online for the next post.

Skipping the big cathedral for now, we then went to another important church of the town, but it's almost entirely forgotten by tourists because it's far from the city center.  It's a shame because it's a really nice place that seems to have been mostly saved from bombing; it's kept its original windows and everything.  This was the abbey of the bishop who converted and baptized Clovis, the first king to be coronated in Reims. 

I was particularly delighted by its architectural shift from Romanesque to Gothic, very apparent in some places.  Notice in this picture the pointed arches next to the rounded one.

It seems to be rather neglected, though: most of its side chapels had nothing in them, there were virtually no lights, and it has an overall air of disuse.

That was pretty much the last stop on our tour of Reims.  There is also an ancient Roman portal - door to the fortified city - in town but we didn't have time to see it.  Another interesting point of trivia: it was in Reims where General Eisenhower received the surrender of Germany at the end of WWII.  The building where this happened is now called the Surrender Museum, I'm sure making a plethora of France jokes along with it.

Reims is only a 45 minute (and pretty cheap) train ride from Paris on the TGV so keep it in mind if you're interested and you visit Paris!