This morning began with a traditional French breakfast at our hotel with croissants, meats, eggs, fruits and various hot café selections. We met our bus and tour guides and headed to Ile de la Cite where we walked to Notre Dame. It was so breath taking to come upon the Cathedral from behind crossing the bridge to see this monumenteous structure. Seeing this work of art that was built during the Middle Ages and took 163 years to build was just incredible. As a FAPA tutor, I was really rewarding to see what I had studied last year and what I have been trying to explain to the students. Even after seeing so many churches, from St. Patrick’s in New York, to all of those in Rome, they are all so different and fascinating at the time. What was really amazing to learn was that 70% of the stain glass in the church is original and the summer before World War II began all of the stain glass windows were dismantled and all the glass pieces were labeled so they could be restored after the war. Paris was not going to let another war destroy any more churches. We also found out that Notre Dame is owned by the city of Paris, not the Catholic Church.
After some picture time and shopping time we started our walk to Sainte Chapelle Church. This church was erected to be the King’s private chapel in the 12th century, but also to house the Holy relics that King Francis I purchased from Byzantium in the 1100s. It is so interesting to find the church because it is surrounded by the judicial building. Once we finally got to the church it was surprising to it in amongst so many other buildings. On the first floor of the church we saw some of the only paintings still on the wall and learned that those with a red background and gold castles represented the King’s mother who was from Castile and those backgrounds of blue with gold fleur-de-leis represented the Virgin Mary and the Holy Trinity. We then carefully climbed the spiral staircase to the chapel where we were in awe when we reached the top. The entire top half of the chapel was covered in stain glass, with stories of the Bible depicted on them from left to right and from bottom to top. It was just a remarkable thing to see when you realized when the church was constructed and that much of the stain glass is still original. Unfortunately some of the Holy Relics that were purchased had been destroyed during the Revolution when the downstairs was used as a stable.
Onward we pressed where we met our coach to take us to the Louvre, the first palace of the kings and home to art now. We lunched in the Louvre mall and had a chance to peruse the many shops before we headed into the museum part. Our first stop was the Winged Angel of Victory who represents with her wings that victory can always fly away. Then we moved on to several religious art pieces, several triptychs and Da Vinci’s Madonna on the Rocks (sound familiar from The Da Vinci Code, where one of the clues were found?) Then we went into the room with probably the most famous painting and the largest painting: The Mona Lisa and The Marriage at Cana respectively. It is definitely surprising how small the Mona Lisa is compared to her notoriety. Apparently her notoriety has more to do with her being stolen and lost for three years along with her puzzling appearance. Then we went on to the neo-classicism style paintings of Delacroix and Gericault along with the painting of the coronation of Napoleon. According to our tour guide, one of the sisters in the painting has a different color dress on in the one hanging in Versailles because the artist was in love with that sister. I’m looking forward to seeing that picture tomorrow. After a few more paintings along the corridor and the ceilings we finally came to the Venus de Milo. It is really something that her head remained in tack while her arms did not, while the Winged Victory’s arms remained attached, but not her head. After the key highlights of the Louvre, we parted ways to go explore the museum and Paris on our own. My friends and I went exploring through Napoleon’s apartment and the statues that had been moved from the Tuileries Garden to the inside of the museum. I couldn’t believe how large some of the vases or urns were and how short the beds were at the same time. We also found some prehistoric art as well as medieval art. I look forward to going to the Cluny Museum of Medieval art later this week. After we had our fill of art we headed outside and walked through the gardens, or shall I say sat down in the grass as the Parisians do. We walked back to our hotel and headed to dinner at a little café around the corner. It was a great meal and there were two cats at the café, certainly not something you’d find in America.
teacharoundworld 