Reims, the largest and most populated city in the Marne department of France. It's also the city that took me at least a year to learn how to pronounce correctly.
I had been calling it Reemz for the longest time until one day someone corrected my pronunciation.
"Oh, you mean Raunce."
When you are learning a new language you quickly discover that most letters are either silent or have completely different sounds than what you would expect from them. You start to wonder things like:
"Why do they put an "s" on every word if their not even going to pronounce it?"
"Okay so I should basically just ignore any "t" that I come across on the end of a word."
I'm sure that English is the same and I'm just so used to it that I dont notice such nonsense. "Kn" and "gh" combinations must be frustrating for new learners.
But I digress. Let's get back to the city.
Reims is located in the Northeastern part of the country close to the border of the Champagne region. With so many large Champagne houses headquartered there it is sometimes considered a sort of unofficial capital of Champagne. Its probably an ongoing debate between the cities of Reims and Epernay.
Nonetheless, tours and tasting are a common activity in the city and Champagne can be seen and bought in many shops and restaurants.
We even bought a bottle ourselves to take home with us, though this particular brand is actually based out of Epernay.
We ended up drinking it on New Years eve of 2020.
Historically Reims was once a major city within the Roman empire. Remnants of that time can still be seen there to this day.
The port de Mars dates back to the 3rd or 4th century.
The crowning jewel of Reims though is its impressive Roman Catholic Cathedral, dedicated Our Lady. It is a major tourist attraction and receives approximately one million visitors each year. It will be the main subject of this post.
Notre Dame Cathedral
The Cathedral as it is today was originally built in 13th century to replace its predecessor that was destroyed by a fire in 1210.
Work on the new Cathedral began a year later in 1211 and was completed in 1275.
The church stand 81 meters tall and is 149 meters in length.
The architectural style of the cathedral is High Gothic, which tends to be more refined as well as more prominent and imposing than regular Gothic.
It's has all of the usual Gothic features such as flying buttresses and stained glass,
but brings the additions of extended heights, realistic sculptures, and refined tracery.
Tracery is the use of stone bars and moldings to line and support windows. As the name suggests, it traces around the features that it is meant to support.
The Rose window is a common feature of the High Gothic style as well and is a good example of the use of tracery to create elaborate supports for stained glass.
Even the flying buttresses of the Reims Cathedral are quite elaborate. They are adorned with a small tabernacle and inlaid with statues of different saints.
There are more than 2300 statues lining the front and back facades.
Near the beginning of this post I stated that the Cathedral was the "crown jewel" of the city and I used that phrase intentionally.
In some ways it was sort of the crown jewel of the country as well. It served as the traditional Coronation location for all of the early kings of France.
In 1793 during the French Revolution the cathedral was closed for a time and converted into a storage house for grain. During that time many of the sculptures were destroyed by the people of the city. The relics were also melted down for their gold and the bells were turned into cannons.
In 1914 during World War One the cathedral took heavy damage after multiple artillery raids. One such raid caught the church on fire.
The fire was so hot that it actually melted the bells and the lead roof.
Molten metal was even seen pouring out of the mouths of the stone gargoyles.
Part of the cathedral is now a museum and I don't remember if the gargoyle in the photo above was an original or a replica. I'm guessing it is a replica.
The Cathedral was rebuilt and restored over the preceding decades and eventually turned into a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1991.
The interior of the cathedral is impressive as well. I only took a few pictures inside when I was there but I didn't get a good overview of the space so I found two photos online to give you an idea.
They show the Rose windows of the front and side entrances as well as the seating arrangements.
I took a few photos of the interior architecture though, including this photo of the pointed arches that are a common feature of the Gothic style. Pointed arches are used for decoration as well as to increase height within the interior. In the photo you can also see that the columns are surrounded by three addition smaller columns, which are meant to secure the column in place and to give them more strucure and style.
You can also see the use of the four part rib vault, which also allowed for greater heights, as well as more harmony between the choir and nave.