OUR LADY Notre Dame is 130 meters long, 48 meters wide and 35 meters high on vault. It has 5 naves, 37 chapels, 3 roses and 113 windows. It was built in stages from east to west with some irregularities, eg, the north tower is wider than the south tower, and this difference is explained by the fact that the cathedral during its construction, was the seat of a bishop and only the archiepiscopal cathedral had the privilege of having the towers exactly alike. Paris becomes, in effect, the county seat of an archbishopric in 1622.
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Vers 1163, l'archevêque de Paris, Maurice de Sully, entreprend la construction de la cathédrale Notre-Dame. Le pape Alexandre III pose la première pierre, et, en 1185, la construction de l'église is advanced enough to be able to celebrate the Divine Office. The mass of the building is completed in 1223, but it will take more than a century to complete the countless details of sculpture can still admire the triple gate and triple gallery of its facade, its side gates Its three large stained-glass windows, all those arabesques, these laces, these pillars, the statues, the stone worked to date. We consider that this magnificent building was completed in 1330.
Cathedral retain its unity until the seventeenth century Gothic style. Thereafter it underwent numerous mutilations, especially in 1793 when revolutionaries shoot the arrow, the statues of the 28 niches and statues of the kings of the main facade while draining the interior of all metals that are sent to the mint to be melted. Notre Dame is transformed into a theater dedicated to the worship of Reason. Napoleon Bonaparte restored the worship in the cathedral in 1802 and it is crowned Emperor in 1804. In the early nineteenth century, the success of the Victor Hugo novel "Notre-Dame de Paris" has raised an enormous enthusiasm for the cathedral and promotes its rebirth and its restoration by Viollet-le-Duc between 1845 and 1864.
THE CRANE
The facade, 41 meters wide and dominated by two square towers of 63 meters (387 steps to climb up the towers), consists of three gates giving access to the building. The central portal is dedicated to the Last Judgement, the left to the Virgin and the right to Sainte-Anne. Over the three portals is the Gallery of Kings, which is an architectural innovation as it is not only decorative but also serves as a passage. It consists of 28 arches housing the statues of 4.50 m high, kings of Israel and Judah. They were returned to the nineteenth century by Viollet-le-Duc to replace the original statues that have been abducted and beheaded in 1793 because we believed they represented the kings of France. Some of these heads, which was believed lost forever, were found by chance in 1977, buried in a pit and are now on display at the National Museum of the Middle Ages-Thermes de Cluny.
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The pink, 9'60 feet in diameter, takes up the theme of the Virgin venerated by the prophets, judges, kings and high priests of the Old Testament. Its network includes stone circle in the first twelve rays, an allusion to the twelve apostles, the second circumference is divided into 24 parts, a figure evoking the 24 elders of the Apocalypse.
INSIDE
Interior, 130 meters long, is shaped like a Latin cross and is composed of a wide nave, accompanied by 37 chapels and chancel, separated from the apse by a large gallery chapels. The chorus itself is largely enclosed by a fence, including the exterior offers a range of subjects carved in low relief. The vault is supported by one hundred and twenty columns in the Romanesque style.
Above the aisles unfolds a beautiful ornate gallery of one hundred and eight columns in one piece. This gallery stops at the crossroads. You go up stairs two by three who are at the entry of the nave, and the other to the right of the chancel, near the Lady Chapel. At these forums or galleries are attached, in time of war, the flags taken from the enemy.
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BELLS
In the South Tower is the largest bell of Notre Dame known as the "Bourdon . It tolls for major holidays such as Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, or All Saints and at very large events.
Le Bourdon was melted, there are over 300 years and called Emmanuel by his godfather Louis XIV. It weighs 13 tons and flying, the part inside the bell that beats against the walls to produce sound, is 500 pounds. The handling of this huge mass is extremely simple: two men swinging, one right and one left on a mobile pedal in the middle of a bell tower structure that ensures the isolation of the bell and ensures the building against a dangerous shock. The sound serious, solemn and mournful drone is made by the F sharp.
In the north tower, four bells provide the ringtones daily hours and offices of the cathedral. They weigh between 2,000 and 3,000 pounds each.
bells ringing in their pace of life of the faithful, calling to prayer, marking the solemnity of their offices. Formerly, it also allows all people to know the time, though today everyone has a watch, it still Sand smooth time mean that the cathedral is a place of life.
gargoyles and chimeras
In architecture, gargoyles are sculptured works of drainage of rain roofs, clean to the Romanesque and Gothic especially. They are generally grotesque.
chimeras, such as gargoyles, have the appearance of fantastic animals and scary but they have a purely decorative function, they represent evil creatures, which looked toward the ground, seem to revel in the spectacle turpitude of mankind. The chimeras that adorn the gallery of famous Chimera of Notre Dame do not have a medieval origin. They were designed by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc and are the product of his fertile imagination. They are pure additions incorporated by the architect, probably to emphasize the representation of the mood prevailing in the Middle Ages.
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Notre-Dame, INSPIRATION
Gerard de Nerval (1808-1855)
Notre Dame is very old: you may see the
Paris Burying however she was born;
But in a thousand years , Time will
flinching as a wolf makes a beef carcass that heavy
twist his nerves of iron, and then a dull tooth
sadly devoured his old bones rock!
Many men of all countries on earth
will come to contemplate this ruin austere
Dreamers, and rereading the book of Victor
- Then they will be like the old basilica, and
All it was, powerful and beautiful
Getting up before them like a shadow of death!
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Victor Hugo (1802-1885) Notre Dame de Paris a novel by French writer Victor Hugo, published in 1831. The title recalls the cathedral of Paris, Notre Dame, which is one of the main sites of the plot of the novel. The novel recounts
the tragic destiny of the Middle Ages a young gypsy girl, Esmeralda, a victim of desire she inspires three men. Coveted by Archdeacon Frollo, it is removed on the order of the deformed bell ringer of Notre Dame, Quasimodo, and then is rescued by the handsome Captain Phoebus falls in love with it. But Frollo jealous stabs Phoebus, and does not intervene when Esmeralda is accused of murder. She is imprisoned, then issued this time by Quasimodo, in love with her, which leads in the inviolable cathedral. The outcasts of the Court of Miracles, worried about his disappearance, assailing the building, and engage, unwittingly, to his worst enemy Esmeralda, Frollo ...
To know more:
Victor Hugo's novel has been adapted several times as a movie musical or comedy.
The oldest of these adaptations is that of 1923, shot by Wallace Worsley.
Many others have followed including that of Jean Delannoy in 1956.
Or, in 1998, the famous musical "Notre-Dame de Paris" by Richard Cocciante and Luc Plamondon.
