Tag: Cluny Museum

Posted on

Gargoyles and Grotesques

Chimera at Notre-Dame de Paris. Photo by Jawed Karim (2014). PD-CCA Share Alike 3.0 Unported. Wikimedia Commons.
Chimera at Notre-Dame de Paris. Photo by Jawed Karim (2014). PD-CCA Share Alike 3.0 Unported. Wikimedia Commons.

One of the icons of Paris and probably one of the first stops for a first-time visitor is Notre-Dame de Paris (Our Lady of Paris) or simply, Notre-Dame. It is located on the Île de la Cité, an island in the Seine, and the historic center of the city. What you see is a beautiful and clean gothic cathedral standing in this marvelous public square. The sun shines down on you and you can see both the Right and Left Banks on opposite sides of the Seine. You can move around relatively easily on either side of the ancient street that bisects the island from north to south: Boulevard du Justice. Prior to 1858, none of this was true.

Medieval Île de la Cité

During the time Notre-Dame was being constructed (1163–1345) the island was a maze of densely populated working-class houses, churches (twenty-seven of them), and narrow, muddy, winding streets. A new east-west road had to be built (c. 1160) to reach the front of Notre-Dame to allow for delivery of construction materials. It was the widest road in Paris at that time: 16 feet. Read More Gargoyles and Grotesques

Posted on

Medieval Paris

We are very close to having the first two books ready to go to print. For those of you new to my blog site, these two books are walking tours of Paris based on the French Revolution. I take you to buildings, places, and sites that were significant to the events surrounding the Revolution. In Volume one (Versailles to the Faubourgs), we begin in Versailles with the convening of the Estates-General and end with two walking tours in Paris. Volume two (Marie Antoinette’s Last Ride) centers on the events from 1792 to 1794. In other words, the time frame when the Revolution got very ugly.

So I have some time on my hands. Well, not really. I’ve begun to write the third book, Where Did They Burn the Last Grandmaster of the Knights Templar?—A Walking Tour of Medieval Paris (987–1547). Just so I don’t get bored, I decided to begin the research on the fourth book, Where Did They Put the Gestapo Headquarters?—A Walking Tour of Nazi Occupied Paris (1940–1944). All along this process, I’m collecting the names of interesting people who are buried in the Paris cemeteries. Why?—because the fifth book will be a walking tour of the Paris cemeteries (Where Did They Bury Jim Morrison, the Lizard King?).

Heads_in_Cluny_museum,_June_2013
Heads in Cluny Museum Photo by Guillaume Speurt

As I write the book on medieval Paris, it strikes me how many sights there are to take you to. Despite Baron Haussmann’s efforts and the urbanization of the 1970s, there are a lot of places to see evidence of medieval Paris (beyond ABC—Another Beautiful Church). One of our stops will be the Musée national du Moyen ge (the National Museum of the Middle Ages—formerly known as the Cluny Museum). The building represents one of four remaining residences left in Paris that was actually built in the Middle Ages. Built in 1334 over the 3rd century Gallo–Roman baths, the building was originally used as the residence for the abbots of Cluny. Today, it houses artifacts from the Middle Ages including the six tapestries of the Lady and the Unicorn. It also has the heads of the statues from Notre Dame that were cut off during the French Revolution. Read More Medieval Paris