My Trip to Versailles
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On my last full day in France, I decided to take another day trip outside Paris, this time to the city of Rheims northeast of Paris itself. We'd studied the cathedral in Humanities in college, and I wanted to see it in person. (Yes, I know you are wondering why I spell the name of the city with an "h" when it is usually written without it. Wikipedia says the longer spelling is the "old" spelling, and so maybe they mean 50 years ago when I first encountered it in high school. I will try to drop the "h" routinely, though, so you youngsters will be sure to recognize the name.)

Getting to Reims

I took a train from La Gare du Nord (the North Station), and it took about an hour to get to Reims. The Gare du Nord was close enough that I could walk to it from the Hotel Vendome.

Trains from Gare de l'Est all go directly east or southeast from Paris. From Gare du Nord, trains go north, of course, but also curve around to head northeast as well.

Paris has other stations where trains head west and northwest (Gare St. Lazare), southwest (Gare Montparnasse) and south (Gare de Lyon). The interesting this is that there is no central station; one needs to use the metro to get from one train station to another. The reason that there is no central station is that there is simply no place to put one; the outlying stations have been in place for a century or more.

I bought a normal ticket at the station and only had to wait 20 minutes for the next train that went as far as Reims. The ticket was, if I recall correctly, about $15 round trip. The trip took a little under an hour.

The scenery along the way was typical, I suppose, of Europe. Once you get out of the city, it is all agricultural with farming villages every so often. As you can see in my picture at right, there is a mixture of new and old construction. I spent most of the trip reading a bit about Reims in my little guidebook.

Reims is located in the Alsace-Lorraine region of France, the northeast corner of the country bordering on West Germany; the city is about 80 miles from Paris. There are about 250,000 people in the area around Reims, with perhaps half that number in the city propery. Reims is on the Vesle River.

Founded by the Gauls, Reims became a major city during the period of the Roman Empire. The town played a prominent ceremonial role in French monarchical history as the traditional site of the crowning of the kings of France. The Cathedral of Reims (damaged by the Germans during the First World War but restored since) housed the Holy Ampulla (Sainte Ampoule) containing the Saint Chrême (chrism), allegedly brought by a white dove (the Holy Spirit) at the baptism of Clovis in 496. It was used for the anointing, the most important part of the coronation of French kings.

Reims was a prime target of the Germans in World Wars I and II. The city was greatly damaged in the first war, and the cathedral was almost totally destroyed. (Pictures of the ruined cathedral were central to anti-German propaganda during that war.) From the end of World War I to the present day an international effort to restore the cathedral from the ruins has continued. The collection of preserved buildings and Roman ruins remains monumentally impressive. During World War II the city suffered additional damage. But it was in Reims, on 7 May 1945, that General Eisenhower and the Allies received the unconditional surrender of the German Wehrmacht.

I arrived at the central train station about 10:30AM, and came out to find a bustling city all around me. It looked very much like the neighborhoods of Paris that I had walked through, but I could tell that it was not nearly so densely-packed.

The principal squares of Reims include the Place Royale, with a statue of Louis XV, and the Place Cardinal-Luçon, with an equestrian statue of Joan of Arc. The Rue de Vesle, the main commercial street (continued under other names), traverses the city from southwest to northeast, passing through the Place Royale. Restaurants and bars are concentrated around Place Drouet d'Erlon in the city centre.

Reims is a city full of Gallo-Roman antiquities. The oldest monument in Reims, the Porte de Mars ("Mars Gate", so called from a temple to Mars in the neighborhood), is a triumphal arch 110 feet long and 45 feet high. It consists of three archways flanked by columns. Popular tradition tells that the Remi erected it in honour of Augustus when Agrippa made the great roads terminating at the city, but it probably belongs to the 3rd or 4th century.

The Mars Gate was one of 4 Roman gates to the city walls, which were restored at the time of the Norman Invasion of northern France in the 9th century. In its vicinity a curious mosaic, measuring 36 feet by 26 feet, with thirty-five medallions representing animals and gladiators, was discovered in 1860. I didn't have time to visit the archaeological museum (located in the cloister of the abbey of Saint Remi), but here there is preserved a Gallo-Roman sarcophagus, allegedly that of the 4th-century consul Jovinus.

But I was here to see the cathedral, so I walked to it from the train station, reading as I walked a bit about the history of Reims as summarized in my guidebook. Reims was founded about 80BC as the capital of the Remi tribe. They allied themselves with Julius Caesar in his conquest of Gaul and after, securing special favor. Perhaps 50,000 people lived here at the height of Roman influence. Christianity was established by 260; the Christian consul Jovinus defended the city until the Vandals captured the city in 406 and Attila the Hun conquered it in 451.

In 496, Clovis was baptized here, using oil purportedly brought from heaven by a dove, and for centuries these events became a symbol used by the monarchy to claim the divine right to rule. The city grew in influence; Pope Leo III (795–816) met Charlemagne here, and Louis IV began a close relationship between the city and the Church. By the 10th century Reims had become an intellectual center, and schools teaching the classics were founded. From Philippe II Augustus (1179) through Charles X (1825), the Kings of France were crowned here by the then Archbishop of Reims. The city was briefly ceded to the English, but was returned to French control by Joan of Arc. During the French Wars of Religion the city sided with the Catholic League.

The city played a pivotal role in the Napoleonic Wars and the Franco-Prussian War, as well as World Wars I and II. This was the price that the city paid for being right in the middle of Europe- and very close to Germany. Right when I got to the modern history of the city, I turned the corner and there was my objective- the Cathedral of Reims.

Notre-Dame de Reims (Our Lady of Reims) is the seat of the Catholic Archdiocese of Reims, where the kings of France were crowned. The cathedral replaced an older church, destroyed by fire in 1211, that was built on the site of the basilica where Clovis was baptized by Saint Remi, bishop of Reims, in AD 496. That original structure had itself been erected on the site of some Roman baths. A major tourism destination, the cathedral receives about one million visitors annually.

Excavations have shown that the present building occupies roughly the same site as the original cathedral, founded about 400AD under the episcopacy of St Nicaise. That church was rebuilt during the Carolingian period and further extended in the 12th century. On 19 May 1051, King Henry I of France and Anne of Kiev were married in the cathedral. Whilst conducting the Council of Reims in 1131, Pope Innocent II anointed and crowned the future Louis VII in the cathedral.

In 1210 the cathedral was damaged by fire and reconstruction of a substantially larger building was started shortly after. In 1233 a long-running dispute between the cathedral chapter and the townsfolk regarding issues of taxation and legal jurisdiction led to a halt in construction when the entire cathedral chapter fled the city. Work resumed in 1236 after mediation by the King and the Pope. Construction then continued more slowly; the cathedral was not basically finished until the 14th century.

Before going inside, I took a couple more pictures outside. I think there are only a handful of churches within Europe that can match the scale of grandeur of Rheims or Notre Dame. I have not a great deal of experience with Catholic churches, but I recall seeing pictures of some of the larger churches in, say, New York City, and while the style is the same the size is not. (NOTE: I might mention, from my vantage point in 2017, that I have over the years had the opportunity to tour much more of Europe, and I can report that there are many, many more than a handful of churches built on this scale. You will see many of them in this photo album's later years.)

(Picture at left) The three portals are laden with statues and statuettes; among European cathedrals, only Chartres has more sculpted figures. The central portal, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, is surmounted by a rose window framed in an arch itself decorated with statuary, in place of the usual sculptured tympanum. The "gallery of the kings" above shows the baptism of Clovis in the centre flanked by statues of his successors.     (Picture at right) The facades of the transepts are also decorated with sculptures. That on the North has statues of bishops of Reims, a representation of the Last Judgment and a figure of Jesus (le Beau Dieu), while that on the south side has a modern rose window with the prophets and apostles.

The nave of the cathedral is about 455 feet long and 100 feet wide. The height to the ceiling butresses is about 125 feet. There are cathedrals with larger interior dimensions, but this cathedral was a marvel of engineering and construction, considering that all the builders had to work with, structurally, was wood and stone. The interior comprises a nave with aisles, transepts with aisles, a choir with double aisles, and an apse with ambulatory and radiating chapels.

(Picture at left) Here is a view of the inside of the Cathedral of Reims. I was struck by the similarities and contrasts to Notre Dame. There was much less stained glass in this Cathedral than in Notre Dame, but I don't know why. One can only imagine how long it took to carve and set the stone used for construction (centuries, as it turned out).     (Picture at right) This is a view into one of the transcepts off the nave inside the cathedral. I found the scale here most interesting, but then I have only been in Protestant churches where the scale of the building itself is not designed to overwhelm the worshippers.

The cathedral possesses fine tapestries. Of these the most important series is that presented by Robert de Lenoncourt, archbishop under François I (1515-1547), representing the life of the Virgin. They are now to be seen in the former bishop's palace, the Palace of Tau. The north transept contains a fine organ in a flamboyant Gothic case. The choir clock is ornamented with curious mechanical figures. Marc Chagall designed the stained glass installed in 1974 in the axis of the apse.

(Picture at left) As I said, Notre Dame had more stained glass, but what was here in Reims was certainly beautiful. The stained glass here was installed and/or reinstalled, repaired and enhanced in a period ranging from the 13th century to the 20th. The rose window over the main portal and the gallery beneath are of rare magnificence.     (Picture at right) The treasury, kept in the Palace of Tau (immediately adjacent to the cathedral itself), includes many precious objects such as the gold objects shown here. Although I didn't photograph it, the treasury also contains the "holy flask", the successor of the ancient one that contained the oil with which French kings were anointed. The original was broken during the French Revolution; a fragment of it is contained in the current one.

The Palace of Tau (the plan of the original building resembled the Greek letter) was the palace of the Archbishop of Reims. It is associated with the kings of France, whose coronations were held in the nearby cathedral of Notre-Dame de Reims with the following coronation banquet in the palace itself. A large Gallo-Roman villa occupied the site until the 8th century; it later became a Carolingian palace. Most of the early building has disappeared: the oldest part remaining is the chapel, from 1207. The building was largely rebuilt in Gothic style between 1498 and 1509, and modified to its present Baroque appearance between 1671 and 1710.

I went back inside the cathedral to go back out to the front, and I thought I would take a closer picture of the stained glass at the front of the cathedral. Here are the three major sections of that stained glass facade:

I went back out the front of the cathedral and spent some time walking around it and admiring all the decoration on the outside. I thought that constructing the building would have been achievement enough, but an immense amount of time was also spent in decorating the structure with all manner of figures, spires, and other decoration.

Look at the incredible amount of decoration at left, and think that it must have taken many months to painstakingly carve even the smallest of the figures. Fire destroyed the roof and the spires in 1481: of the four towers that flanked the transepts, nothing remains above the height of the roof.

It sometimes seems on these ancient cathedrals as if no space whatsoever was allowed to go without some kind of carving, stonework, or other adornment.

From the side of the Reims Cathedral, the picture at right is shows very well the use of the flying buttresses and their supports.

This style of construction, which was the only way known to support a roof of this size and height, was common during the period that these grand Cathedrals were built. It is actually the weight of the roof that supports the roof. As it presses against the outside supports, it forms a tension network that allows it to remain unsupported in the center. Geodesic domes are built on the same principles. Above the choir rises an elegant lead-covered timber bell tower that is about 60 feet tall, reconstructed in the 15th century and in the 1920s. The total exterior length of the cathedral is about 475 feet.

I very much enjoyed my visit to the Cathedral at Reims; I had heard much about it in school, and was interested to see both it and Notre Dame so I could compare the two. I was actually surprised to learn that of the two cathedrals, the one here at Reims is actually larger- by about 30 feet in length and some 15 feet in width. Its towers are also taller by some twenty feet or so. With Paris having been the larger city, one would have thought that it would have the larger cathedral.

The reason the Reims cathedral is larger seems to be at least in part due to the fact that royal coronations were held here, and these were among the most important events held in any cathedral or church throughout the country. This made the Archbishop of Reims a very important figure, and the diocese a very important one to the Church, and so perhaps there was more Ecclesiastical support for the cathedral's construction. It seemed to be more richly-decorated as well.

I had arrived at the cathedral from the southwast, coming directly towards the front of it. I left to walk around the town by leaving on the street leading northwest from the plaza in front of the building, and so the picture at right looks at the facade from the side.

I had an hour or so before I planned to be on a train back to Paris, so I spent some time just walking around the central part of Reims. I do recall running across a pretty nice French bakery with a bunch of enticing pastries in its window, so I stopped in for an afternoon snack. Sadly, I didn't run across a Baskin-Robbins, but then I wasn't really looking for one either.

I was back at the train station about five in the afternoon, and I caught a train back to Paris just a few minutes after. Back in Paris at the Gare du Nord about 6PM, I began the hour walk back to Place Vendome and my hotel. It was pretty dark by this time, so I didn't take any more pictures. As it turned out, my parting picture of the Reims Cathedral was the next to last picture I took in France, as I departed the next day for my trip back to Amsterdam. (The last picture you've already seen- it was the nighttime exterior view of my hotel, the Hotel Vendome.

You can use the links below to either go with me to Versailles or, if you've already seen that page, return to the main page for my visit to the City of Light so you can continue to another photo album page.

	My Trip to Versailles
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