Notre-Dame seen from the Tour Saint-Jacques

Here are two photos that I took from the top of the Tour Saint-Jacques in central Paris. I climbed the 300 steps to the top of that old tower in late July 2013. It was hot and humid that day in Paris, and there was a definite summer haze in the air.

I've been busy exploring my photo archives, which contain something like 250,000 files, with an eye out for photos of Notre-Dame de Paris taken from different angles and in different light conditions. In the image above, you can see the Paris Panthéon off in the distance — it stands just about 800 meters (half a mile) south of the cathedral. I worked in its shadow for a few years back in the mid-1970s.

Above is a much closer view in which you can see the extent of the sheet metal roof that burned away, along with its ancient wooden support structure, in Monday night's fire. I can't believe Walt and I (with other tourists) were permitted to walk out onto the crest of that roof back in 1988. I wonder if they still allowed people to wander around out there in recent years. (Ignore all this. I corrected myself in a subsequent post...)

Surviving windows, and Notre-Dame over the decades

Last night I saw photos that made me think that the south-facing rose window at Notre-Dame had been destroyed by this week's fire. Fortunately, I was wrong. Some research this morning shows me that all three of the cathedral's rose windows, including the Rose Sud a.k.a. Rose du Midi, has withstood the fire and water. My picture dates from my last walk around the inside of the cathedral, in September 2007.

The Rose Sud dates back to the year 1260, when it was installed in the wall of the church. It was a gift to Notre-Dame cathedral from the French king Louis IX, who is also known as saint Louis (b.1214-d.1270). The diameter of the window is about 13 meters (more than 40 feet). There are two other rose windows in the cathedral, one on the opposite (north) end of the transept, and the other in the front façade between the bell towers.

You can see the Rose Sud in the photo above, which I took a few years ago from the "balcony" of the Panthéon in the Latin Quarter. It is the big round stained-glass window near the center of this image, directly under the spire that fell during the fire. The smaller and less ancient window just above it appears in yesterday's photos to have succumbed to the heat of the fire.

Above is another view of the cathedral from afar and on high. I took it from the top of the Tour Montparnasse in April 2002. Walt and I were spending two weeks in a rented vacation apartment about about a five minute walk from the tower, and took advantage go up to the top and take some panoramic and long-zoom photos of Paris. I had a new Canon digital camera at the time.

Speaking of photos from long ago, here's one that I found on the internet showing what the façade and bell towers of Notre-Dame looked like in 1970. This is the way I remember it from my first stay in Paris in March or April that year. I was spending a semester in Aix-en-Provence as a student and had decided to go to Paris for my two-week spring break. I stayed in a hotel in the Latin Quarter and was thrilled to be able to explore the city. It's hard to believe that was nearly 50 years ago.





Photo credit and link

Here's a much more recent photo of Notre-Dame — I took it in April 2007. The black grime was scrubbed off the church back in the 1970s. This part of the cathedral looks the same today, as far as I can tell. It wasn't much damaged by the fire that raged behind it Monday night. There's that to be thankful for.

French president Emmanuel Macron says he wants Notre-Dame cathedral to be rebuilt within five years' time. Many experts are saying that is unrealistic. Only time will tell.

« Notre Drame »

If you look at this blog often, you might remember that I've recently posted many photos of La Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris that I've taken over the past 20 years. Here's a set from April 1, 2013. They're in chronological order, unedited. I was in Paris, on my way to North Carolina, and was walking from my hotel to a subway station to catch a train out to the airport. This morning, one of the Paris newspapers, Libération, carries this banner headline on page 1: Notre Drame.



When you've spent time in Paris, you've probably rushed, strolled, sauntered, and even driven past Notre-Dame hundreds if not thousands of times. I first saw it in 1970. I must have gone inside, but I don't even remember. It was overwhelming to a small-town American at age 20. The last time I actually walked around inside the cathedral was in 2007, when my sister and a friend were visiting France for the first time and I was showing them around. I'm so glad I went inside then. There are photos here and here. Walt pointed out a minute ago that we might not live long enough to see the restoration completed.

Garden survivors.... we hope

Here are some more of the plants in our big back yard that I hope have survived our recent frosty mornings. We don't see any smudge pots or hay bales burning out in the vineyard this morning. Our thermometer reading is slightly higher right now than it was 24 hours ago. Tonight rain is supposed to move in and tomorrow's morning low will be a lot higher. Finally. These just might have been our last cold mornings of the season.

Here's a a brief description of the photos in this 80-second-long, ten-photo slideshow. The first two show a perennial plant that grows in our yard and that we call saxifrage because the previous owner of our house called it that. The scientific name is Bergenia crassifolia, and it's in the Saxifraga plant family. It's commonly called Bergénie or Oreilles-d'éléphant in French. It flowers in winter and is very hardy.

The second two photos are of peonies (pivoines in French). They have big round flower buds on them right now. I hope that they are survivors. If they are, I'll take photos of the open flowers very soon.

The next three photos show plants that we want to survive because we want to eat what they produce: plums on a branch of a tree I planted a long time ago; an apple blossom on a tree that is slowly dying, so we hope what might be its last apples are good ones; and finally, Swiss chard, which is also very hardy, and the leaves actually benefit from being frost-bitten before being harvested.

The last three photos are of a flowering Prunus tree. That's a genus that includes cherries, plums, peaches, almonds, and apricots. The one in our yard is purely decorative and doesn't produce any fruit. It's pretty though.