Day 1: Sainte-Chapelle

Day 1 of a week in Paris - Sunday

The Islands: Ile de la Cité - Ile Saint-Louis

Sainte-Chapelle

• Breakfast: Hotel? (not sure if la patisserie is open Sundays)
• Notre Dame; tour and climb tower
• Place Louis-Lepine - bird and flower market - LAST POST
• Sainte-Chapelle; tour and purchase billets for evening concert - THIS POST
• Lunch: Brasserie de Isle St-Louis -- Look for the stork!
• Walk Isle St-Louis; ice cream at Berthillion; Square Barye
• Supper: Sandwich or omelette?
• Evening concert at Sainte Chapelle - THIS POST

Tucked away inside the Palais de Justice is the chapel King Louis IX - the one and only French king to be canonized, St. Louis - built in less than five years, opened in 1248 to house the relics he'd bought, among them Christ's crown of thorns (now in the Notre-Dame and exhibited only on Good Friday - hurry and book a ticket to be there Good Friday, April 10). It is said that what he paid for the relics was equal to the cost of the chapel. The relics were kept in the upper chapel, where the royal family worshipped. The chapel was built without any buttress support, at 67 feet, a big accomplishment at the time.

There is no getting around it. You must visit the Sainte-Chapelle twice - once in the day to see the 1,500 square yards of stained glass windows, with nearly 1,200 scenes - two thirds of them original - lit by sunlight, and again in the evening for one of the small concerts. I like to do both visits in one day, first touring and studying the biblical story told in the windows, then picking up tickets for the evening concert, and finally returning in the evening after a stroll down Isle St-Louis next door, a light omelette and braised potatoes for supper at one of the brasseries, and an ice cream at Berthillon. Or, if you're of the European inclination, eat supper after the concert.

As you can see in the photo below of the upper chapel, the tops of the vast windows are nearly impossible to capture in detail, so bring your opera glasses. One priest apparently came every day all day for two weeks to study each pane of Bible stories. Some of the windows tell the history of the chapel, which is lined with wooden chairs for sitting and viewing the windows and the tourists. Invariably there are uniformed schoolchildren being hushed by their teachers as they shuffle along looking awed by the high color around them.

When your eyes tire from such intense study, leave the chapel, go downstairs and find the ticket office where you can purchase concert tickets for this evening.

Once you've experienced the magnificent colors of the stained glass in the day, coming back for an evening concert feels like a rare privilege. Only a small number of people (100?) can sit in the wooden chairs, now lined up in rows facing a temporary staging area where a handful of string musicians make up a chamber orchestra playing Vivaldi or Brahms.

A few weeks after Don and I returned from Paris in 2003 where we spent a week celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary, I was thumbing through the June 30 New Yorker and was stunned and pleased to find John Updike's poem, above, which I tore out and slipped into the photo album I'd made for the trip. His feelings there show the power of music in such a setting.

We have one more item on our Day 1 itinerary, which I'll post next week: Berthillon ice cream on our stroll down the Isle St-Louis.

photo courtesy Wiki Commons

photo courtesy Donica Detamore

PARIS Métro: Cité

Ile Saint-Louis - back after 2 years

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No, I haven't been back to Paris, well only in my mind. But as I was writing up a Paris homesickness post at synch-ro-ni-zing, it became evident that I needed to revisit this space. I had run out of digital photos to post, but I still have unposted film images, so let's see how far I can get from two visits captured on film.

In 2003 Don posed on the Pont de la Tournelle above, with the Notre Dame sitting atop Ile de la Cité, one of the two islands that float in the Seine like ships. The smaller island at the stern of Ile de la Cité is Ile Saint-Louis, behind Don out of view. See "Don is here" in the map, below. If you look at the Paris map at the top of my sidebar, the 

islands are on the blue Seine river line just between the 4th and 5th arrondisements.

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With its one central street - rue St-Louis en Ile - two streets on either coast, and a

few streets perpendicular to them, there is a compactness about Ile Saint-Louis

that could feel claustrophobic - or cozy. I choose the latter. We stayed on this island

in an old, historic apartment. My only complaints were the darkness in the apartment,

due to the narrow streets with high buildings, and how expensive the shops were,

including grocery stores. But it was handy to be anchored in the center of the city 

in our lodging.

One aspect of apartment rental that's wonderful (besides being more economical

than a hotel) is meeting the owner, which we did, over wine at his place, also on 

the island. He is a geriatrics doctor on the staff at Hôtel-Dieu, the oldest hospital in Paris (founded 651!), on Ile de la Cité next to the Notre Dame cathedral. But our host had already gone beyond normal landlord hospitality and rather than just give us a key at a local watering hole when we arrived, he picked us up at the airport and drove us into the city (Don's first time in Paris) along the Champs-Élysées, just for the fun of it! (In my seven trips to Paris, I have had far more pleasant human encounters with the French than unpleasant.)

our host, with Don

rue St-Louis en Ile:

These two views, below, are of the Ile de la Cité, from Ile Saint-Louis. I believe the bridge in the first is Pont d'Arcole.

I took black and white film with us on this trip 

because I'm drawn to black and white images of Paris.

On my second Paris trip (first one I was 19 on study abroad in 1975) with my sister Nancy in 1997, we ate a couple of times at Brasserie de Isle St-Louis with its famous stork.

Even an omelette in Paris tastes like food for the gods.

We like the waiters here, who act like gods and have been around forever and whom I recognized on later trips.

Now that I've taken a few loved ones to Paris, planning the itinerary is a real pleasure. I always plan to arrive on Saturday, then spend Sunday, the first real day out, on the islands that float in the middle of the city, then branch out like spokes the rest of the week. A small chamber concert in the Sainte Chapelle in the evening is a perfect ending to Day 1 - its effect is like a lullaby. 

I'll post more about Day 1 next week.

Day 1 of a week in Paris - Sunday

The Islands: Ile de la Cité - Ile Saint-Louis 

• Breakfast: Hotel? (not sure if la patisserie is open Sundays)
• Notre Dame; tour and climb tower
• Place Louis-Lepine - bird and flower market
• Sainte Chapelle; tour and purchase billets for evening concert
• Lunch: Brasserie de Isle St-Louis -- Look for the stork!
• Walk Isle St-Louis; ice cream at Berthillion; Square Barye
• Supper: Sandwich or omelette?
• Evening concert at Sainte Chapelle

this photo of Brasserie de Isle St-Louis taken by Donica Detamore

Église de la Madeleine

Looking north from the Place de la Concorde, past this fountain, you can see the church dedicated to Mary Magdalene, at the end of rue Royale. Louis XVI was beheaded with the guillotine just near here in the square.



The Neo-Classical Église de la Madeleine is affectionately called "La Madeleine" by Parisians. There are 52 Corinthian columns around the edifice.





This statue inside is of Mary Magdalene's ascension. It was built in 1837 by Charles Marochetti.



The painted frieze shows Jesus and the disciples.

I posted about Mary Magdalene in May, just as the movie "The DaVinci Code" was being released. I mentioned this church briefly then.

Two separate plans for this church were scrapped, the first in 1776 and the second in 1790.Then Napoléon thought Paris needed a temple to his army, and commissioned it to be completed as that honorary building. However, that too was scrapped for the Arc de Triomphe instead. In 1814 Louis XVIII decided it needed to be a church, but it was almost redesigned into Paris' first train station in 1837. Since 1842 it's been a church. (Information found at http://www.paris.org/Monuments/Madeleine/)


In 1969 the Catholic Church admitted quietly that there was no biblical basis for Mary Magdalene being a prostitute.


Every day except Monday there is a flower market around the church.


Edouard Leon Cortes(1882 - 1969) Flower Market at the Madeleine, Oil on canvas

St. Gervais

Etching found at http://bseince.free.fr/bfparis/collection.htm

There is a surprising little alleyway just off the Quai de l'Hotel de Ville by the Seine, around the corner from the Hotel de Ville (City Hall) across from pont Louis Philippe, which I first discovered on my last trip to Paris, in May this year. This narrow building, below, pulls you in to the alleyway with its unusual stature.

Just to the left of this building is the St. Gervais church, (there is also a St. Gervais ski resort in the French Alps. I can't find out who St. Gervais was, though!) and the alley that goes up steps next to it, called place St. Gervais. Leave it to the Europeans to take advantage of every open space and set up a café outside on those steps. Brilliant!

The St-Gervais-et-St-Protais Church is among the oldest in Paris. There are records that date back to the 4th century, saying there has been a church on this site that long. But the way it looks now is from the 16th century. (So new.)

The place next to the church used to be called Crossroads of the Elm, for the large elm tree that used to stand there (and still has photos in the church). I guess a lot of money changed hands in that crossroads.

Also, on Good Friday in 1918, during WWI, a German shell fell on the church, killing 100 people.

Heather Stimmler-Hall says, "Today the church is used by the Catholic Community of Jerusalem, whose robed monks and nuns are often seen strolling around the neighborhood. Stop by at 4pm on the first Saturday of the month to hear a free recital on the oldest organ in Paris, built in 1601."

This window faces the place on rue des Barres.

Mary Magdalene in Paris

May 19 the film “The DaVinci Code” will be released worldwide to church controversy. Many will boycott the film, because it goes against traditional church teaching about Jesus’ relationship with Mary Magdalene. (Since when do books and movies have to be based in fact? Well, but when you’re talking about the marriage status of Jesus, the figurehead of one of the world’s great religions . . .)

I had my own Paris adventure with Mary Magdalene in 2004.

That year I was reading the book The DaVinci Code at about the same time I was learning more about Mary Magdalene (MM) from a spiritual teacher I met. Before then I didn’t know, for instance, that MM and others of Jesus' disciples may have escaped persecution in the Holy Land to Provence.

Mary, the name of the spiritual teacher, told me I was a “Magdalene” in a previous life, a follower of MM who joined her in fleeing Israel to France. I don’t accept or deny this claim, nor do I feel any particular attachment to MM, other than to find her story interesting theologically and sociologically. (Was she really a prostitute? Or did church leaders over the centuries misrepresent her because her role in Jesus’ life was outside social norms and thus beyond acceptance and comprehension?)

But because of the claim that I was a Magdalene, and because MM was said to have settled in France after fleeing Israel for her life after her friend and lord Jesus was killed, I set out on an already planned visit to Paris in October with companions with the new intention of visiting the Church of the Magdalene (Église de la Madeleine) and paying attention to any statuary I saw of her elsewhere in the city. Perhaps she would speak to me?

Église de la Madeleine, or simply “La Madeleine” was originally built as a temple to the glory of Napolean’s army in the 1760s. But after the fall of Napolean, King Louis XVIII decided to use it as a church. In the apse there is a statue of Mary Magdalene that looks very much as though she is pregnant, interestingly enough. Unfortunately I don't have a photograph to post here so you can decide for yourself. But believe me, either she is bending back in a limbo position, or she has a large abdomen!

After touring La Madeleine, Ginnie, Donica and I went to the Louvre on Monday, believing we had hours to browse (always check updated “ouverture” – opening and closing times at museums; old travel books don’t always have the current hours). It is said that if you spent 10 seconds standing before every display in the Louvre, it would take two months to see everything. It covers half a million square feet. We had 45 minutes before the museum closed.

We decided to go ahead and do “Louvre Light” (Louvre EXTRA Light) and feverishly dash around to see the Mona Lisa, the Winged Victory and Venus de Milo. Just before sprinting off to view these treasures, Donica noticed an enlarged photo of a Mary Magdalene statue on the Louvre map. Of course I had told my travel buddies about the “MM watch” and so we knew we had to go check out the statue.

Gregor Erhart was a 16th c. German sculptor who carved this gorgeous statue out of limewood c. 1500. From a distance, walking up the gallery toward her at the end of a long hallway, La Belle Allemande (as she is also called) is stunning in her life size elegance and quietude. But the true awe comes when you stand below her and gaze into her eyes, or rather, receive HER gaze. The only way to describe it (for when you feel it, it is indescribable) is to say that she comes alive, looks into your soul and communicates love and acceptance. How Mr. Erhart accomplished this I can’t comprehend. But I’m grateful to the museum designers and engineers who placed the statue at a perfect height to allow the effect.

Then, the museum was closing, and we had to leave, pulling ourselves reluctantly from MM’s captivating gaze.

Later in the week, we went back to the museum to see other rooms and displays, spending the two hours we’d anticipated on Monday. In spite of the intimate experience we’d had with her earlier in the week, we all agreed that we didn’t need to see MM again this visit. So we found the nearest elevator and began our exit from the Louvre. Reaching the lower ground floor (from where you enter and exit – under the glass pyramid), coming out of the elevator, we looked both ways to get our bearings, and there we were within a few feet of the Erhart MM statue! There she stood, bronze hair flowing, rose cheeks, mouth half smiling, eyes gazing down at whomever was standing beneath her. Stunned, we agreed that SHE wanted to say good-bye to US, and so, she did.


Photos courtesy Ginnie Hart and Donica Detamore