Soissons : la cathédrale

    

When you first lay eyes on the cathedral at Soissons, you almost feel sorry for it. Where did its north tower go? Well, it never went anywhere. It was planned but never built. Construction of the building began in the 13th century and continued into the 14th. Then the Hundred Years' War intervened. Construction was halted.

This cathedral has suffered through many battles and wars, most notably the Great War of 1914-18. The town of Soissons was 80% destroyed during that war, and the cathedral was heavily damaged. The town was rebuilt; the cathedral was restored.

The interior of the cathedral stands in stark contrast to the exterior. The Michelin guidebook uses phrases like absolument symétrique in praising la beauté intérieure de l'édifice, calling it une merveille de grâce...

     

Encore une panne

Another breakdown. Last night I noticed that our refrigerator was not as cold as it should be. There was a red warning light on the electronic control panel. Some bread we had in the freezer felt soft. We pushed a lot of buttons and the warning light went off. However, the fridge was still not working this morning. Luckily we had room for a lot of frozen things in the downstairs freezer. I also just summarily put a lot of stuff in the garbage. Now we have to figure out what we're going to do about getting a new fridge. This one is seven years old.

P.S. The man who might be able to repair the fridge is coming over tomorrow afternoon. He also sells appliances and has a model in stock that we are interested in. Tomorrow will be decision day — or not, if he says the old fridge can't be repaired or is not worth repairing. If that's what he says, we'll soon have a new fridge.

Next stop, Soissons and a ruin

After spending an hour or two in Senlis on that Sunday morning in June 2011, we drove on east to the town of Soissons. The first place we stopped for a Kodak moment was at the ruins of an old abbey church called Saint-Jean-des-Vignes. The abbey was founded in the year 1076 and was one of the richest abbeys of the Middle Ages. The largesse of French kings, bishops, local lords, and bourgeois merchants financed the building of an imposing abbey church and sturdy monastic buildings on the site in the 13th and 14th centuries. That's what the Michelin Guide says.

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Centuries later, in 1805, the emperor Napoleon and the bishop of Soissons signed an order to have the abbey church
torn down so that the materials it was built with could be used to repair the nearby cathedral in Soissons.
People protested, and the authorities agreed to leave the church's main façade standing.

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Le Logis de l'Abbé de Saint-Jean-des-Vignes

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Senlis : le quartier ancien

These are some photos taken in what the Michelin green guidebook calls le quartier ancien around the cathedral in Senlis. By the way, the church was built nearly a thousand years as a cathedral, replacing a first cathedral that was already more that 500 years old. It was overseen by a bishop, and the town of Senlis (the final S is pronounced) had been a royal city where Frankish kings held court. However, the Senlis cathdral is no longer officially a cathedral, and the royalty moved away many centuries ago. Senlis had earlier been a Roman colony.

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More stained glass inside the cathedral (four prophets)

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The town of Senlis (pop. 15,000) has a very informative web site where you can read more (in French) about the history of the city and the cathedral, including this panoramic view of the quartier ancien. This part of the town was within the walls of the old Gallo-Roman settlement. Senlis is just 30 or so miles north of Paris and only 10 miles north of CDG airport. As a bonus, the famous Château de Chantilly is only 5 miles to the west.