Tall cathedral is tall - I actually wanted to look more closely at these buildings in the foreground, but the crowds kept us moving.
A bit easier to pause here in the square. The intricacy of these facades is quite stunning. There's just so much going on. And then you think about how long it took to get even a square metre of this completed.
Another square on the south side of the building. Not sure at all what this sculpture was supposed to be. There was also a music thing setting up - seems to be a popular thing with European cathedrals to have live music events in the grounds.
Inside, it was more peaceful. Well at least for short periods. Whenever the chatter grew, there was an announcement "Mesdames et Messiurs.... Shhhhhhhhhhh!" and all fell quiet again. These windows are on the north side.
Didn't quite get the full majesty of the West window in this shot. It's a bit like photographing the moon, it looks bigger in real life!
Our first trip into Strasbourg wasn't all culture - before we got to the Cathedral, we'd already had a stop in a Starbucks, the local shopping mall for some cosmetic necessities that I didn't understand and then we'd had lunch in one of those weird modern urban restaurants that's trying to have a little of everyone's culture to make them feel at home. It didn't help that I've been reading and thinking a lot about migration and community lately, I was particularly sensitive to the fact that this really wasn't somewhere a local would have taken us.
But then we walked across to the Cathedral and steeped ourselves in several hundred years of patient construction. Again, this is community building - literally through building something bigger than themselves. It felt really good to stop and be awed by the hugeness of it. As I've noted in a caption above, the whispering of the crowds started off imperceptibly and then grew and grew as people became less conscious and then they were shut down again by a member of staff going "Shhhhhhh" over the PA. I wish I'd recorded a portion of it!