Paris, part Two: Retrospect

The four towers of Montmartre

Continue from Paris, Part One: Les Jongleurs

Sunday was quite a relaxed day that star­ted with a rush to get to Saint Sulpice church, for an organ con­cert Leon was abso­lutely reluct­ant to miss. All five of us, we actu­ally atten­ded to the whole mass: organ was play­ing before, dur­ing, and half an hour after.

The church had quite an inter­est­ing façade. Mix it with the naves of Notre-Dame, the aston­ish­ing stained-glass win­dows of Saint Chapelle, and add some of the col­ours from Saint Eustache, and you will get a ter­rible mélange of all the ste­reo­typ­ic­al French churches that would­n’t fit all togeth­er but alone are just unique, as each one of the churches of Paris. Really, read a bit about his­tory of church archi­tec­ture and then just go to Paris.

But talk­ing about archi­tec­tur­al won­ders, con­sider the two big domes here as well: Pantheon, and Les Invalides. Leon and me vis­ited the former wth Juanjo – while Jorge was on Mont-Saint-Michel –, a build­ing that holds the tombs of a lot – a lot! – of import­ant French per­son­al­it­ies, includ­ing Maria Skłodowska Curie, whose name was mis­spelled as Sklodowska and cor­di­ally cor­rec­ted by some gra­cious man with a mark­er. Leon and me vis­ited the lat­ter after the organ con­cert – while Jorge was with some date at Rodin museum – just to won­der which coun­try I have to con­quer to get a grave like that one. Worth men­tion­ing, the whole bas-relieves sur­round­ing him are noth­ing but a mes­si­an­ic – and still not too inac­cur­ate – apo­logy of all his suc­cesses and accom­plish­ments. And in just one build­ing, we vis­ited the Emperor, a king of Spain and Naples, a king of Westphalia, and a king of Rome.

Let’s remark now Montmartre. The quarter was par­tic­u­larly full of street artists, tons of them offer­ing por­traits or archi­tec­tur­al draw­ings. Shall we con­sider it an ideas-gath­er­ing for our cal­li­graphy? We climbed up to the Sacré-Cœur with our bikes, to find such a neo-byz­antine church whose four towers had a par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing fea­ture ‑can you find out what’s it?

The four towers of Sacré-Cœur, Montmartre, Paris
We left the city on Monday, me being sure that’s a city I’ll be back, even if it is only to bring more of my mother­’s cakes to Juanjo, with an excited Leon who was finally start­ing his trip: at that point, Jorge and me already had circa 750km.

Leon Friederichs cyclist

N.V.

One Reply to “Paris, part Two: Retrospect”

  1. Oh… Please!!
    Could you tell us The answer?
    I can see some dif­fer­ences between them, but not a “par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing feature”…
    I can­’t man­age with the intrigue! Please!!!!

Leave a Reply to Lucía Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.