Another long post! Last weekend we made a quick trip to the town of Rouen, which is about 75 km northwest of Paris. The proximal reason for going was that a singer friend was on tour in France and we were going to see her concert, but we also thought that it would be interesting to visit a smaller city outside of the metropolis of Paris.
Rouen is known mainly for being the place where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in 1431, and also for its iconic cathedral, which Claude Monet painted more than 30 times. But there are also several museums, lots of architecture to look at, and many nice places to eat and drink.
Note: you can click on any photo below to see an enlarged version.
The Rouen Cathedral is the tallest church in France, due to its somewhat incongruous (but amazing) cast-iron spire that was added during the 19th century. The church itself was constructed starting in the 12th century and they continued adding onto it on and off for about 400 years, not counting the spire! You can tell that it was built over a long timespan because each piece of the cathedral looks different from each other piece. As each new section was added, it was designed to be in line with was was in vogue at the time, so you get a sort of patchwork of styles. There was some construction stuff up when we visited, so we couldn’t get a great picture of the facade. But the internet can help us: here’s a good picture of the cathedral. Greg took the photo you see here at the left, where you can see just the spire from a distance through a wall that encloses a courtyard next to the cathedral.
The other interesting thing about the cathedral is Monet’s obsession with it: he rented a studio in a building across the street so that he could visit over and over at different times of day and in different weather conditions. Here’s an article that shows some of his paintings. I love the way they are all so different from one another, and some are so impressionistic that you can barely tell what the painting is depicting.
Parts of the cathedral’s facade have been cleaned and parts haven’t. I wonder how many centuries of grime is on there. Here’s a spot where you can see the difference between the two sections.
In the ambulatory, which is in the altar end of the cathedral, there was this cool gallery of statues. I am not sure who all these guys are, but I am going to take a guess that they are religious or political figures.
The cathedral in Rouen is not the only awesome gigantic piece of old architecture in town. There are two others: The St Maclou church and the abbey of St. Ouen. St. Maclou was having some serious-looking restoration work done, so we didn’t really get a good look at it. But the abbey was unfettered by scaffolding, so we got nice views of it from every angle. We visited it twice because we liked it so much. We saw it first in the late afternoon on Saturday, and then we wanted to see what it looked like with morning light so we visited again first thing on Sunday.
The first thing I noticed was that the abbey has a remarkable number of stained-glass windows. It is brighter inside than any other large church I’ve been in. The effect is somewhat similar to St Chapelle in Paris: huge sheets of stained glass and light (though less colorful). But since the abbey is so much larger than St. Chapelle, there are two rows of thick support pillars along the length of the space, making it hard to capture all those windows at once in a single photo. Still, they throw a lot of light into the church, which gives it a warm, inviting feeling.
Here are two photos of the exterior of the abbey. The first is a picture of the east end, where the altar is, taken late in the afternoon. Next is a photo of the north/entrance end, taken in the morning. You can see the extreme amount of detailed stone carving. It’s easy to understand why these buildings took centuries to finish, especially since they didn’t have modern manufacturing techniques back then!
Down on the square where Joan of Arc met her end, there is a quite modern church, next to the remains of an old church. The modern church, finished in 1979, is much smaller than the gothic buildings we saw, and has a sweeping arched-up ceiling that is supposed to evoke the image of a boat hull. The roof has slate tiles that evoke fish-scales, and there are even two stylized fish-shape windows. The most interesting part was that the new building incorporates some impressive stained glass windows that were saved from the church that previously existed on the square, which was destroyed during WWII. I think the windows date from the 16th century, but I am not sure if I remember that correctly.
On Saturday, we had lunch at a kebab place near our hotel. Kebab doesn’t mean the same thing in Europe as it does in the US. In Europe, kebab is a sandwich with thinly sliced meat that has been roasting for hours on a huge rotating spit. It’s one of Greg’s favorite foods over here, and I like it too because it’s not very expensive. But our kebab shop was extra-special because it was directly across the street from Rouen’s Palais de Justice: the Palace of Justice. This is still a functioning government building even though it is also a beautiful example of gothic-style architecture. From my seat at the table I got a picture of our view during lunch. Look at all those cool gargoyles!
From this post, it sounds like all we did during the weekend was stare at old buildings, but that’s not the case. There is a lovely art museum in Rouen, and we spent a lot of our time just sitting in cafés and restaurants. For me the culinary highlight of the weekend was our dinner at La Voûte Musicale, which specializes in galettes (basically the same thing as a crêpe, but made with buckwheat). The food was delicious, and the service was easygoing and friendly. I would definitely return there if I visited Rouen again.
We also witnessed a bar fight on Sunday evening! We were in that no-man’s land between finishing our sightseeing and the time when restaurants open (around 7pm), so we went to a local bar to have a drink. There were three guys at the table next to us, and they were just a little rowdy. I didn’t find them threatening, though; they seemed to be in good spirits. But when one of them said something to the bartender (which I didn’t quite hear), he got a good tongue-lashing. All evening the bartender had been running around like crazy. He was very busy trying to keep up with everything, so I suspect that they were giving him a hard time for not taking their order fast enough. Anyway, I thought that was the end of it, until a few minutes later when the bartender finally did come over to take their drink orders. The guy who the bartender had yelled at started saying stuff to the bartender along the lines of “I know so-and-so, and I’m going to tell him about this. You can’t talk to me that way,” etc. Suddenly, the bartender and the other dude were shoving each other (I didn’t see who started it). And then they migrated so that they were fighting directly in front of our table, knocking over their table and breaking some beer glasses in the process. It was just like in the movies! My instinct was to quickly get up and walk away inconspicuously. Greg’s instinct was to stand up and stare at them: he believes that the social pressure of a bunch of people watching a fight helps keep it from getting too violent.
So, that was what we did this weekend. It was relaxing, educational (in more ways than one), and fun.
Greg and Jen – I just love your writings about the places you are seeing. I have forwarded some of them to my friends who are going to be in France the coming week – as they may want to visit these places after reading your blog – such wonderful details. I hope you are keeping some sort of diary or will the blogs be sufficient to write an article after you return to the states? Keep sending the great news of your experiences. Thanks. Mary
I love that 2nd shot of the interior of the Abbey, Jen — really stunning. A bar fight! How exciting! Glad you didn’t get involved . . . !!!