Notre-Dame's
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The cathedral of Paris Notre-Dame is the most visited church of France. It is built in the lowest point of Paris, it stands out stately at the turn of a street or behind a bridge. Baron Haussmann remarkable enlarged the parvis of Notre-Dame and this offer you a very good viewpoint of the facade; the apse and the building as a whole can be admired from the Quai de Montebello. The cathedral itself offers a wonderful view of the city if you climb the 378 steps which lead to its towers.
Construction. This end of the island has been a sacred place at least since the Gaul-Roman period. The pagan temple has been substituted with churches. During the 12th century two churches were built there, one dedicated to Saint-Etienne and the other to Notre-Dame. When Maurice de Sully became bishop of Paris, he decided to build in their place a grand monument to the Virgin. The work began in 1163. The choir was finished just 20 years later, and when Maurice de Sully died, in 1196, the nave was almost finished. The facade was flanked with the towers at the end of the 13th century. Some chapels were then placed among the buttresses, along the side aisles and the choir. As the tribunes obstructed light, they had to be lowered and the windows enlarged. This required the substitution of the simple supporting arches with the flying arches which give the church an elegant and original look. With the construction of the chapels the facades of the transept had remained recessed. Two clever architects, Jean de Chelles and Pierre de Montreuil, extended each transept for a span.
In the 19th century the cathedral is in a serious state of decay. The "Romantic" movement revalues medieval civilization. Besides, Louis-Philippe orders Lassus and Viollet-le-Duc to restore Notre-Dame's completely. The work, which began in 1864, includes the elimination of some added-elements, the restoration of the part under the roof, the reconstruction of the statuary, the revision of the stained glass, the reconstruction of the spire, the construction of the sacristy. The methods employed, harshly criticized today, permitted nevertheless to save the building.
History. We are often told that Notre-Dame's summarizes the history of France under its vaults. In 1239, king Saint Louis IX, barefooted, laid there the crown of thorns, which remained there until the unveiling of the Sainte-Chapelle; in 1302 the first States General of the reign, gathered by Philip the Fair, take place there; in 1431 the young king of England Henry VI has himself crowned king of France, and six years later Charles VII has his return on the throne celebrated there with a Te Deum. In 1572 Marguerite of Valois, in Notre-Dame's choir, and the protestant Henry of Navarre, at the church's door, get married; not long after the chiefs of the Ligue swear there their definitive opposition to Henry of Navarre; finally in 1594 the latter, become Henry IV, is present in the choir to the mass for the surrender of Paris. He summarizes his conversion to Catholicism with his famous, laconic sentence "Paris is well worth a mass". In 1660 is here celebra ted, with a Te Deum, the marriage of Louis XIV. Bossuet delivers the celebrated funeral oration of the Grand Conde in 1687. The Revolution renames the cathedral "Temple of Reason", then "Temple of the Supreme Being". On December 2nd 1804, Napoleon is consecrated Emperor in the presence of Pius VII in the church transformed with skilfully arranged hangings; this event is immortalized in David's painting "Le sacre de l'Empereur" (two reproductions of which are at the Louvre and at Fontainebleau). The restored Notre-Dame's has been so far a theatre of the great French events: the marriage of Napoleon III in 1853, the baptism of the Imperial Prince three years later, the national obsequies of great men such as general Foch in 1929, or the poet Paul Claudel in 1955, or general De Gaulle in 1970. Pope John Paul II, in 1980, celebrated the mass on the parvis.
Description of the exterior. The facade, built between 1200 and 1250, is a balanced summary of strength and harmony, and matches the triple vertical division with the three horizontal registers clearly emphasized. At the ground floor the three portals are arranged with intended irregularity. The central one is the most beautiful and the largest; it represents the Last Judgment. The two lower architraves are a reconstruction by Viollet-le-Duc, since Soufflat had suppressed them in 1771 to open a passage for the processional canopy of Louis XV. The portal of the Virgin is surmounted by a pediment. A strange fascination emanates from the characters represented in the upper architrave: the Virgin is clowned by an angel and blessed by Jesus. On their sides are two angels, slightly recessed, who support large candles. The oblique and curved lines which make up the work are characteristic of the "international Gothic" sculpture. Below, a touching sleeping Virgin is represented. The meaning of the anecdote is evident so much so that two apostles have fallen asleep. In the lower architrave, the Ark of the Covenant surrounded by three kings and three prophets. The right portal, called portal of Sainte-Anne, has, in its upper part, an architrave of the church which preceded Notre-Dame's in the llth century. On the doors, the wrought-iron hinges are masterpieces of medieval art.
On the floor above the portals, the gallery of the kings presents 28 trilobate arcades, each one containing a statue of a king of the Old Testament. It reinforces the horizontal lines of the facade, with a remarkable aesthetic effect. During the revolution these statues were regarded as statues of the kings of France, which caused their destruction; Viollet-le-Duc substituted them with new ones.
The wide rose-window, flanked by two large windows with twin openings, stands out in the centre of the facade. With its 9.60 metres of diameter it is an architectonic challenge.
The plane of the rose-window is surmounted by a gallery of fine small arcades from which the two towers seem to rise, these too with twin openings.
On the north side was once the cloister of the canons. The name of the street (rue du Cloitre Notre-Dame) and of the north portal keeps the memory of it. The facade of this transept, as well as the one of the south side, are the work of the architects. J. de Chelles and Pierre de Montreuil. They constitute not only an aesthetic masterpiece, but also a dizzy technical bet: the whole of the rose-window and the flight of windows form an 18-metre-high empty space, where the rose-window alone has a diameter of 13 metres. Under the north portico, the pediment presents in its lower part scenes of the life of the Virgin, in its upper part episodes of the legend of deacon Theophilus, who, after coming to terms with the devil, is saved by the intervention of the Virgin. In the Middle Ages theatrical performances of these scenes sometimes took place on the parvis of Notre-Dame's. In the partition-pillar, the Virgin and Child is a masterpiece of the 13th-century statuary. The canons used to enter their cathedral through the "red door". The pediment is decorated with a relief representing the coronation of Mary - a work rich in poetry - devoutly framed by the king and the queen: they may be Saint Louis and his wife Marguerite of Provence. In the curvatures, the presence of a carved cordon with dogrose flowers and leaves makes this work likely to be ascribed to Pierre de Montreuil.
The apse is chiefly characterized by the daring beauty of the flying arches (15 metres of light) which seem to crown the head of the building.
The Square Jean XXIII has substituted, since the 19th century, the archbishopric and a quarter of heaped houses.
The spire rises from the cross-vault of the transept. Destroyed during the revolution, it was rebuilt by Viollet-le-Duc. Interior. The nave, flooded by the changing light of the stained-glass windows, recalls the magnificence of the exterior and strikes him who enters with solemnity and grandness. It develops along ten trusses as far as the transept, and rises on three floors. In the 13th century the twin stained-glass windows, less high at that time, were surmounted by oculi; Viollet-le-Duc picked up this solution in the last truss before the transept. The tribune on the 2nd floor and the ogival cross-vaults divided into six parts are a sign of "arcaism" in comparison with the innovations of the rose-windows. The side aisles, double, include seven chapels for each side. The transept is lighted by the north rose-window, almost intact, and by the south rose-window, widely restored.
The choir, whose partition dates back to the 14th century (the bas-reliefs were repainted by Viollet4e-Duc) is classical. As a matter of fact it was redecorated under Louis XIV who in this way wanted to thank the Virgin keeping the vow of his father Louis XIII. The stalls are left today .and, behind the high altar, the deposition from the cross by Coysevox flanked by the statues of Louis XIII (by Coustou) and Louis XIV (by Coysevox).
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