Well, today it felt like we criss-crossed most of central Paris, and we kind of did. We started off by heading just down the road from the hotel to the Cathedral of Our Lady of Notre Dame. It’s a fantastic looking building from the outside, and the stained glass windows, well, you can see why they were inspiring.
 |
| Notre Dame exterior |
The interior is quite dim, not a lot of electric lighting, and unlike in many cathedrals the stained glass is fully coloured and dark, and the windows are small. While it is an impressive building, the interior is crammed with chairs, plastic rope dividers and of course people (both Catholics and visitors). It almost felt mundane, which is probably because unlike many of the cathedrals we visited its still heavily in use.
 |
| Notre Dame interior |
From one religious centre to one that three different times has been a religious centre. We walked over the bridges and headed into the Latin Quarter where the Sorbonne and other schools are (named the Latin Quarter as teachers and students used to converse in Latin) and visited the Pantheon. Originally built as a church to St Genevieve (patron saint of Paris
We then went and sat in the Jardin du Luxemberg (gardens) and had lunch near the Senate building (once the Palace du Luxemberg), a lovely way to spend the middle of the day.
 |
| Palais du Luxemberg (Senate) |
A walk back over the Seine to look at some shops put us near the Centre Georges Pompidou, a modern museum designed to be a centre of artistic exploration and learning for everyone – not just a painting museum. It houses the National Museum of Modern Art (Picasso etc) and is quite impressive. The clear plastic covered external escalators are quite something, as was the neon light installation...
 |
| Centre George Pompidou |
No comments:
Post a Comment