Part 22, Paris: Notre Dame and the Louvre

5/6/2017   Drizzle tapering off mid-afternoon.   54F

The day after Versailles was a wet one with drizzling rain, so we were not in a hurry to go anywhere after our usual mid-morning breakfast buffet. Boy we sure got lucky with the weather for Versailles yesterday! Yours truly got in a good 1½ hour nap after breakfast and I was ready to go not long after that. Cheryl decided not to go out in the rain, but instead to stay back in the hotel room and work on her Facebook post for Jerusalem, Masada and the Dead Sea. I had decided that since this was our only day to see the other Paris icons that we wanted to visit, Notre Dame and the Louvre, today was it, rain or no rain. So I headed out solo.

Didn’t have a great start: I headed up Avenue Bosquet in the wrong direction (away from the river) but soon discovered my error when none of the landmarks looked familiar, then got straightened around. The next problem was getting Metro tickets out of that damn ticket machine at the Pont de l’Alma station by the Seine … the ticket selling office there was closed so there was no help to be had there. After about 5 unsuccessful tries, I went for getting a single ticket with the change in my pocket, which worked.  But wouldn’t you know I went down the wrong stairs leading to the platform on the opposite direction than I needed to go. So much for that ticket! Had to go back up to the street to get another ticket to get back into the station to go the opposite direction! After some 10 tries with the line behind me getting longer and longer I finally stepped aside to give the folks behind me a chance at the machine … and to consider my options. Go back to the hotel? No, dammit, this is Paris and there is no tomorrow! Okay … back in line to go through it all again, and like yesterday the locals were having trouble getting the machine to work too. Back to the front of the line … and this time I went for an all-day ticket to cover any possible additional problems I might have navigating the subway system. I finally got the machine to work, but instead of an all-day pass, it printed 10 individual tickets and dumped them all in the tray! Well, THAT should cover whatever comes up during the day!

At last … headed in the right direction, I caught the first RER train that came along to the “St. Michel/Notre Dame” station, and walked across the short bridge to the Notre Dame Cathedral which was right there. Wow … there is that nearly 700-year-old Gothic monument in all its glory! The same intricately carved stonework is still there in exactly the same places as when placed there by 12th Century hands.

Photo 2588. Front of Notre Dame, constructed 1163-1345.

The line to get into the cathedral was about a block long, and I got in it. There was about a half hour wait — not too bad — and no one seemed to mind the light rain – the mood was festive.

As a matter of related engineering interest, Notre Dame was one of the first buildings in the world to use flying buttresses. The original intent had been NOT to include flying buttresses, but the tall stone walls developed stress cracks during construction due to the ceiling vaults pushing outward against the walls. The flying buttresses which look as natural as could be and just a part of medieval Gothic design, were simply an extremely artful heavy pile of carved stones leaning against the walls to hold them up! And with more of the weight from above going down and out through the flying buttresses, the walls could then be built thinner and with much larger window openings for allowing more of that heavenly stained-glass light to the interior to enhance the desired effect, which it most certainly does.

Photo 2588-2. South side of Notre Dame
(Photo credit: complexmania.com.jpg

Then a pleasant surprise: there was no admission charge to get into Notre Dame, and better yet: no limitations on cameras or photography. Fantastic! I was like a kid in a candy store blazing away with my camera on the interior of the cathedral. The views down the nave (the main central hall of the cathedral), were very beautiful: the golden light, the soaring vaulted ceiling, the back-lit columns and upper arches, the ribbed vaults, and stained glass windows above … breathtaking.

Photo 2621. Notre Dame Cathedral, the nave, 16mme

The central nave and outer aisles drew me on to get photos from every possible angle, including the choir, the Rose Window, and a display series on the construction of the cathedral! Pure heaven for a civil engineer!

Once again, I marveled at the huge scale of this medieval cathedral, and how the pre-Renaissance builders of the day were able to erect such a complex structure with its ribbons of stone going so many directions with no modern knowledge of stresses or strength of materials, without precise drawings or surveying methods. The dedication and perseverance … the artisanship! Construction took the better part of 200 years, from 1163 to 1345.  Just imagine the scale of time required for construction. For example a stonemason’s father and grandfather would have worked on the cathedral, and you could expect to grow old, pass the work to your son, and still not live to see it completed! The skills needed to pull this off were from accumulated practical experience passed down … with no real technical analysis. There was a common impulse to build higher and grander … over time they found out what was possible by finding out what was not possible, i.e. when a structure collapsed. It did happen, but not here!

Photo 2625. Notre Dame stone columns and soaring rib vaults

Photo 2654. Notre Dame South Transept vaults & Rose Window

Photo 2671. Rose Window and its stone framing

It would have been easy to spend the rest of the day in and around the Notre Dame Cathedral searching out more views, climbing the towers, visiting the archeological crypt … but it was getting late in the afternoon, and I still wanted to get to the Louvre, if only to photograph its courtyard fountains and the Glass Pyramid designed by the famous Chinese-American architect I. M. Pei (who incidentally is still living and turned 100 in 2017). I had to tear myself away.

After another subway ride to get to the Louvre, there was the usual confusion when exiting a subway station but soon figured out my directions and found my way to the courtyards of the Louvre. There was no possibility for seeing the inside of the museum … it was just too late in the day and seeing the Louvre is an all-day project, even for the bare basics. So the courtyards on a gray day had to be enough. Even so, just seeing that huge Baroque palace with its intricate stone work, fancy towers and roof cornice details, plus all the ogling people, the fountains, and the Pyramid … and judging by the sight of so many cheerful people around it looked like folks were having a good time there. I know I was.

A short historical sketch: the Louvre dates back to the 1200’s when there was a fortress on this site complete with external walls and a moat. By 1546 it was demolished by Francis I to build a palace to serve as main residence of the kings of France. Francis I also started a vast art collection to pass down to subsequent French royalty, including DaVinci’s Mona Lisa which is still there. The role of the Louvre as a royal palace continued until King Louis XIV completed a move of that function to Versailles in 1682 as previously described in Part 21. In 1793, during the course of the French Revolution the Louvre was converted into an art museum to make the art more accessible to the people. It was closed from 1796 to 1801 to fix structural problems, and was reopened with improved lighting, and with the exhibits better arranged in chronological order. There were further additions in the 1800’s and by 1871 it was largely in its current form.   And the most compelling statistic about the Louvre? … it is the most-visited museum in the world. All this of course beckons us back for a visit another time to Paris for a more in-depth look. Good grief … there is so much of Paris we still have not seen … it would take weeks.

And … a couple of photos from the Louvre:

Photo 2681, Napoleon Courtyard of the Louvre with fountain & pyramid

Photo 2715. The Louvre Richelieu Pavilion, pond, & pyramid

Finally it was getting late enough that I had to tear myself away from the Louvre to make my way back to the hotel. Now that it was almost time to leave Paris, I was finally figuring out how to navigate the subway system by its color coding and route-naming system, so armed with a pocket full of tickets left over from earlier I made my way back to our hotel in no time. For dinner we headed out to a café on the Rue Cler again. Although it had been an interesting day, it was not quite the same without Cheryl.

It’s almost sacrilege to blow in and out of Paris for only two days. In retrospect I am a little heartsick about not having more time to take in at least a little more of the fantastic sights of Paris: the Champs Elysees, the Arc de Triomphe, the Pompidou Museum, Montmartre, the Tuileries Gardens, not to mention going back to see the icons of the Louvre. I had similar feelings when leaving Rome and Athens after short visits, but I REALLY felt it when leaving Paris.

The following morning we took a taxi to the Gare du Nord to catch the “EuroStar”, the bullet train from Paris to London via the Channel Tunnel. It happened to be the day of the French presidential election. It seemed that it could be a momentous day with the possibility of the “Putinization” of France by Marine Le Pen hanging over all of Europe. But alas there was no sign at all of the election going on … just looked like a quiet Sunday morning. It wasn’t until we got to London that we learned that Emmanuel Macron trounced Marine Le Pen … possible disaster averted.

On to London.