Notre Dame and Chartres

Chartres Cathedral

They are totally jousting in the middle. Jousting! I love it.

I had better pictures of the frieze, but in the middle of this one is a scene of Christ ascending into heaven. If you look closely you see his feet hanging down as the rest is going up. It makes sense, but it just tickles my funny bone to no end.

The shapes that made up the windows were absolutely incredible. Here are some examples, there were a ton of different ones, I was astounded.

There was a whole other series of windows up higher.

Ok, this isn't an amazing picture, but it is the best one I have to attempt to illustrate the height of the cathedral. So if I was standing by the pillar on the left, my head would be about where the light spot in the center of that stain on the stone is. Also keep in mind that the picture doesn't even really get in the top of the thing.

Here are two pictures of the outside and the buttresses, again not the best pictures to truly give the scope, but you can see how beautiful and how complex...particularly complex when you consider the similar picture of Notre Dame lower down.

Notre-Dame de Paris

Good view of the tourists...bless them. :)


For Christmas the cathedral had an incredible light display of the section of the stone frieze that depicted the Christmas story. The scenes are carved in stone and painted, but as the cathedral is dim you normally don't see them extremely well. It was all dark, and they would light up one figure at a time, moving from one figure to another until the entire scene was lit, and then they would start on the next scene. It was really fun because it made the medieval purpose of teaching scripture stories through images more real and viable. (I have wondered before how they made head or tail of anything, and how most people were able to even see the images since they didn't have glasses) Singling out the images was great because it made you notice things that you would have missed otherwise. I also really liked it because it increased the sense I had of reading the scene, I don't think that our modern eyes are used to the post-renaissance perspective, and it is difficult to follow the and appreciate the complex, crowded, layered medieval formatting.






Check out the doors!

View from across the river from the Ile de St. Louis. The back is beautifully proportioned with stunningly clean and simple lines.

This view literally stopped me in my tracks...despite below freezing temperatures it was simply breathtaking.