Saturday, August 10, 2013

inSPIREd and Dreaming of France



 The rules for this meme are: Please join this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.
Maybe we can all satisfy our yearnings for France, until we get there again.





Killing two birds with one stone this week, I thought I'd post some additional shots from the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Strasbourg France which we visited in October.
I will cover the astronomical clock in another post as the cathedral itself is so amazing.

The Strasbourg Cathedral soars out of a huddle of medieval houses, with a spire of such delicate, flaky, lightness it seems the work of confectioners rather than masons.





At 142 metres (466 feet), it was the world's tallest building from 1647 to 1874, when it was surpassed by St. Nikolai's Church, Hamburg. Today it is the sixth-tallest church in the world and the highest still-standing structure built entirely in the Middle Ages.


The Strasbourg Cathedral is also highly unique due to the fact that it only has one spire. The north spire was completed in 1439, but the planned south spire was never built. Why the south spire never got built is still under debate. What is known however is that the single spire of the Strasbourg Cathedral quickly became a landmark of the region, which is probably one of the reasons they keep it in its asymmetrical form.




During World War II, Strasbourg's Cathedral was seen as a symbol for both warring parties. Adolf Hitler, who visited it on 28 June 1940, intended to transform the church into a "national sanctuary of the German people" or into a monument to the Unknown Soldier; on 1 March 1941, General Leclerc made the "vow of Kufra" (serment de Koufra), stating he would "rest the weapons only when our beautiful colours fly again on Strasbourg's cathedral". During the war, the stained glass was removed in 74 cases from the Strasbourg Cathedral and stored in a salt mine near Heilbronn, Germany. After the war, it was returned to the cathedral by the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives section of the United States military.







 I can just imagine these gargoyles spouting water on the tourists on a rainy day!

  




8 comments:

  1. wow, that almost touches the sky ... so tall ... those stain glass windows are just amazing!!
    neat. ( :

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  2. Absoulutely Stunning! I would love to see this in person!

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  3. beaautiful cathedral...unfortunately I've never been there... maybe once...

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  4. Wow, Definitely a unique architecture! the both exterior and interior areas of the Strasbourg Cathedral are beautiful.
    such a great heritage site to visit in France.

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  5. I can't believe the amount of detail on this church. I'm more of a big picture person, so the idea of trying to build something like this would make me hang my head and cry. Love your photos. Thanks for playing along today.
    Here’s my Dreaming of France meme

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  6. What a beautiful place! I would love to see that.

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  7. You have me wanting to go back-I do not remember all that detail on the church.

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