“HOW TO LOOK at a Gothic Cathedral” would be a good subtitle for this piece. For the uninitiated, the three major elements of Gothic architecture are l’arc brisé (pointed arch), la voûte sur croisées d’ogives (vaulted arches which cross diagonally), and les arcs-boutants (flying buttresses).
If you read a little French and have a passion for architecture, look for the Grammaire des Styles series in Latin Quarter bookshops. (Gibert Jeune, gibertjeune.fr, is the best known, with eight locations around the Place Saint-Michel—the general-interest bookstore is at 5 place Saint-Michel—and one in the Grands Boulevards neighborhood.) The series, published by Flammarion and popular among students, covers architectural styles from all over the world; the three most useful titles for France are L’Art roman, L’Art gothique, and La Renaissance française. Each volume is an inexpensive, slender paperback featuring black-and-white photos and drawings.
ANNE PRAH-PEROCHON is an art historian, lecturer, and former editor in chief of France Today, where this piece originally appeared. She has been decorated by the French government as a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur and Officier des Palmes Académiques. She also writes the history section of France-Amérique: Le Journal français des Etats-Unis, a monthly founded in 1943 by World War II France Libre exiles that became the international weekly edition of Le Figaro in the 1960s. In 2007, France-Amérique was bought by Journal français, the largest French-language journal published in America since 1978.
THE SHEER NUMBER of major churches that rose in France between 1170 and 1270 (six hundred of them!) is awe-inspiring. Even more impressive is the fact that they are still standing to this day, through numerous wars and hundreds of years. It is impossible to visit France without stumbling upon these lofty monuments in which you can appreciate, for free, masterpieces of just about any art form.
However, you might sometimes be perplexed about the best way to visit these awesome buildings. I hope the following tips and recommendations, based on personal experience, will contribute to your enjoyment.
Take along warm clothing—even in the middle of summer, a cathedral is usually chilly and drafty (the crypts are particularly icy). Also, wear comfortable shoes, because you will probably be doing a lot of pacing in one spot as you admire your surroundings. Inside the church, beware of uneven flagstones, worn over many centuries by millions of feet. Because you walk most of the time with your eyes up, it is easy to make a misstep or even twist your ankle.
If you are tempted to climb the stairs leading to the towers or the steeple to enjoy a panoramic view, remember that there are hundreds of them—narrow, hollowed in the center, very steep, and in spirals. Climbing cathedral steps is not for the weak of heart; Notre-Dame de Paris, for one, counts 387 steps in its northern tower!
Sunlight streaming through the verrières (stained-glass windows) of large cathedrals such as Chartres, Amiens, and Bourges offers a kaleidoscopic effect, so select a sunny day for your visit if possible. If not, try to visit each cathedral at its optimal time of day. For example, Notre-Dame de Paris is very dark inside, so if you must visit on an overcast day, do so at midday. Chartres and Amiens, on the other hand, are naturally bright, so you can visit them later in the day. Different parts of the churches—all oriented the same way—are also best seen at particular moments of the day: the light through the windows of the apse (behind the altar) is at its most joyous in the morning, whereas the sunset light creates very dramatic effects on the rose windows of the western façade.
Even if you are not religious, you will have an enriching experience if you attend high mass on Sunday mornings, because a cathedral is fully alive during mass. Attend a service to experience the organ music, the vapors of the incense, the flowers, and the liturgical chants. Times are posted at the entrance or marked in your guidebook. In summer, large cathedrals offer free concerts of sacred music on Sunday afternoons. Until his death a few years ago, the celebrated organist Cochereau was often found rehearsing or performing in Notre-Dame de Paris.
A guided tour is only as interesting as its guide. If you spot a priest or a monk explaining the details of the church, follow him! They are the best guides, because they live on the premises, take part in local excavations, and often have authored scholarly books on their church; in short, they are passionately in love with their topic. In the absence of a tour guide, a region-specific Michelin guidebook (with the green cover) offers a good balance of explanations and useful tips.
Before entering the cathedral, walk around it to appreciate its architecture and the relationship of the steeple and the towers to the rest of the building. Remember that builders always started with the choir (where the altar stands), because without a choir the church was useless. Because it often took several generations to build, a cathedral could become a stylistic hodgepodge as architects of different eras came and went. The average building time was about eighty years and life expectancy was thirty years, so a child born in Reims around 1210, when its cathedral was begun, could hardly have hoped to see it finished. This privilege was reserved for the child’s great-grandchildren. This hodgepodge effect can be seen in Chartres cathedral, although it was built remarkably fast. On the north portal of Chartres, the statues have stylized hieratic heads seemingly stuck on stiff candlelike bodies, whereas the statues of the Royal Portal are graceful and free, representative of a later style.
When looking at a Gothic cathedral, you are at a disadvantage over your medieval counterpart, who, upon entering a church, automatically knew where to find a symbolic scene and the reason for its placement. Keep in mind that all cathedrals, at least until the sixteenth century, were enormous compasses oriented from the rising to the setting sun, a custom dating from early Christian days. It was customary to enter from the western side, which is where sculptors lavished their creativity, particularly on the tympanum above the main portal. Medieval theologians and artists confused the meaning of the word occidens (the western side) with the verb occidere, meaning “to kill,” so it seemed natural to them to represent the end of the world on the western façade (the western façades of many cathedrals, including Notre-Dame de Paris, La Sainte-Chapelle, Bourges, and Chartres depict Last Judgment or Apocalypse scenes).
Once inside, look at the relationship between the length of the church, the height of its ceiling vault, and the dominating presence of windows. Before looking at the numerous details of the interior, take a quick tour of the cathedral, following the bas-côté (right aisle) all the way to the abside (apse) and then come back to the main portal by the left aisle. Stop at the croisée du transept (transept crossing), where the north-south and east-west axes meet. This is the best place from which to evaluate the daring of the medieval engineers and architects, who erected vaults up to 140 feet high. Leaning against one of the four angle pillars, look up to the vault or the tower in the transept. It is dizzying, especially in Bourges or Amiens. Try to imagine the cathedral as it looked originally, when every inch of space was covered with color—paint, tapestry, embroidery, Byzantine brocades, or Oriental rugs.
Depending on the time you have and the interest you feel for details of architecture and iconography, you may want to tour the cathedral again, this time following the description of Michelin or a more specialized book. To better appreciate the beauty and picturesque details of the pillars and tall stained-glass windows, bring a pair of binoculars. Without them, you might not realize that the beautiful stained-glass windows are not just displays of color, but long narrations that usually can be read from bottom to top and from left to right. In Chartres, the famous Charlemagne window (on the left in the ambulatory, behind the main altar) traces Charlemagne’s story from the vision of Emperor Constantine to Charlemagne’s deliverance of Jerusalem through Roland’s battle with the Infidels and subsequent death.
Chartres’s windows also reflect the wide range of donors, those individuals with sufficient power and wealth to make donations independently of the ecclesiastical authorities. A full panorama of medieval society (some four thousand royalty, nobility, tradesmen, and craftsmen) is shown in figurative medallions depicting seventy guilds or corporations (bakers, shoemakers, water carriers, butchers, money changers, wine merchants, and tailors, among others) hard at work.
The Charlemagne window was paid for by the corporation of fur merchants, whose “signature” stands at the bottom, where a merchant shows a fur-lined cloak to his customer. Some signatures were displayed in prominent locations (the medieval equivalent of advertising): the newly baked bread of the bakers who donated the window of the Prodigal Son can be seen in the central window of the central chapel, whereas the portrait of another donor, Thibault, Count of Chartres, was put in a dark corner next to the Notre-Dame de la Belle Verrière window to the right of the choir.
The art of identifying seemingly anonymous characters or saints in stained-glass windows or other art forms lies in the recognition of their distinctive emblems, used in art since the sixth century CE. These clear and expressive images enabled even illiterate people to understand abstract ideas. Not only do we recognize them because of their appropriate dress (bishops in robes, kings crowned and robed, soldiers in armor) but also by the instrument of their death (the wheel for Saint Catherine, the knife for Saint Bartholomew, stones for Saint Stephen, arrows for Saint Sebastian …).
Equally important is the relative position of the saints in relation to Christ, because the closer to God, the saintlier the character is assumed to be. On the portal of the Last Judgment in Notre-Dame de Paris, the saints are presented in orderly concentric bands below the patriarchs, prophets, confessors, martyrs, and virgins surrounding the figure of Christ.
Symmetry was also regarded as the expression of heaven’s inner harmony, so artists juxtaposed the twelve patriarchs of the Old Testament with the twelve apostles of the New Testament (each with the emblem of his former occupation, such as the fish for Peter, the fisherman, and a purse for Matthew, the tax gatherer), and the four major prophets (Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and Jeremiah) with the four evangelists (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). In the saintly hierarchy, next came the four archangels. Naturally, Mary held the prime location, very close to Christ on the right-hand side.
Once you have identified the carved scenes in one cathedral, you will be able to apply this knowledge to most churches, because no medieval artist would be rash enough to modify the appearance of figures and the arrangement of the great scenes from the Gospels or to group figures according to individual fancy. Similarly, you won’t need long to identify the church iconography and to recognize many characters and scenes, even if you weren’t born into the Christian religion. King David is always shown playing the harp, and the three magi are invariably wearing crowns, even while they sleep! Seeing a tiny naked child, you will recognize the image of a soul; seeing a mature woman clasping a young girl, you’ll know it is Anne, holding her daughter, the Virgin Mary.
Now, after arming yourself with the appropriate clothing, a good guidebook, binoculars, and a little knowledge and endurance, you can fully appreciate this free and edifying pastime of visiting cathedrals.
So many great books have been written about Gothic cathedrals that they form an inexhaustible supply. Two of the oldest studies remain the best:
Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, Henry Adams (Houghton Mifflin, 1933).
Notre-Dame de Paris, Allan Temko (Viking, 1959).
Notre-Dame de Paris (Place du Parvis Notre-Dame, 4ème / notredamedeparis.fr). Open every day 8 a.m.–6:45 p.m.
Crypt of Notre-Dame de Paris. Open April to September daily 10 a.m.–6:30 p.m.; October to March, 10 a.m.–5:30 p.m. The crypt contains vestiges of two-thousand-year-old houses.
Musée de Notre-Dame de Paris (10 rue du Cloître Notre-Dame, 4ème). This museum retraces the great moments in the history of the cathedral.
La Sainte-Chapelle (4 boulevard du Palais, 4ème / sainte-chapelle.monuments-nationaux.fr). Open March to October, 9:30 a.m.–6 p.m.; November to February 9 a.m.–5 p.m.
Cathédrale Notre-Dame (Place Notre-Dame / cathedrale-amiens.monuments-nationaux.fr). Open April to October, 8:30 a.m.–noon, 2–7 p.m.; November to March, 8:30 a.m.–noon, 2–5 p.m. Its nave rises 138 feet with the support of 126 slender pillars.
Cathédrale Saint-Pierre (rue Saint-Pierre / cathedrale-beauvais.fr).
Cathédrale Saint-Étienne (Place Étienne Dolet / cathedrale-bourges.monuments-nationaux.fr). This is the widest Gothic French cathedral and the most similar to Notre-Dame de Paris. Its western façade has five sculpted portals. Beautiful stained-glass windows.
Cathédrale Notre-Dame (Place de la Cathédrale / diocesechartres.com/cathedrale).
Cathédrale Notre-Dame (Place du Cardinal Luçon / cathedrale-reims.com). Open 7:30 a.m.–7 p.m.; closed November 1–March 14. This cathedral has been the backdrop of French kings’ coronations from medieval times to 1825 (King Charles X). Its western façade has two thousand statues. In its apse, there is a lovely Chagall window showing the Crucifixion and the sacrifice of Isaac.
Cathédrale Notre-Dame (Place de la Cathédrale / cathedrale-rouen.net). This Gothic masterpiece was painted thirty times by Monet in the 1890s; several of the paintings are in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.
Steven Barclay
Steven Barclay is the author of one of my favorite books, A Place in the World Called Paris, with a foreword by Susan Sontag and illustrations by Miles Hyman (Chronicle, 1994). Here Barclay has gathered wonderful excerpts from twentieth-century fiction, poems, essays, and memoirs and organized them under such compelling categories as “Conditions of Its Greatness,” “Presence of the Past,” “Seasons, Rain, Light,” “Means of Transport,” “Love and Solace,” and “A City to Die In.” Among the writers included are Patric Kuh, V. S. Pritchett, Djuna Barnes, Henry Miller, Maya Angelou, Ludwig Bemelmans, Mavis Gallant, James Wright, Ned Rorem, Cyril Connolly, Jean Rhys, Nina Berberova, and Françoise Gilot. For those who want a book of short passages to be picked up at random, this is the livre for you!
Barclay holds dual French and American citizenship—he was born in Los Angeles, but when he was four, his father, who worked for Bank of America, was transferred to Europe and the family landed in Paris in 1965. His maternal grandmother was French, and his mother now lives in Paris year-round. (Barclay lives in San Francisco but owns a place in Paris that happens to have the address of the original Shakespeare and Company bookstore.) “France was always home,” he told me, “and today I go to Paris every two months and I stay for ten days or so, and then I go in the summer and stay a month.”
Working on his book enabled Barclay to reconstruct his Paris. When he reached adolescence, he read “anything and everything to do with Paris. I read authors who had travel essays about Paris, diaries and memoirs, everything. And I collected them all. I photocopied them and I would reread them and I put them all in a box. And so the contents of that box became a book. Just as I tend to avoid books on the bestseller lists, I tried to find writings that hadn’t become clichéd. The book was the purest form of Paris for me—it’s the Paris that exists in your head and you can have it at any moment when you turn the pages of my book.”
I asked Barclay to share some of his Paris favorites. He loves “the Deux Magots at seven a.m., when there are no Americans there. You can read the Trib or Le Monde and it’s wonderful. I love it. The same four people wait on you. Give me pavement and a café any day! I do not long for a park or a forest or a beach. The Place des Vosges at eight in the morning is also nice, because there’s no one there.”
But Barclay’s favorite Parisian spot is the Musée Albert-Kahn and its garden, in a suburb just west of the city (14 rue du Port, Boulogne-Billancourt / albert-kahn.fr). “I can’t remember how I first heard about it, but I’m always interested in anything new. I was stunned by its beauty, and I have an affinity for small museums that used to be private residences. Kahn was a wealthy banker who lost everything in 1929, but for ten to fifteen years preceding that, he had, with his money, enabled young people—not professional photographers—to use his state-of-the-art equipment to create a color photographic record of, and for, the people of the world. He wanted to show the French people that we were all the same. The photos are now considered to be the most important collection of early color photographs in the world, and the gardens are beautiful and well maintained. It’s a complete secret—no one really seems to know about it, even the French. People say things like, ‘My aunt took me there when I was ten—what’s it like now?’ ”