Visiting Saint-Denis...
Once upon a time, when the Romans were martyring Christians, the Romans tried to get rid of a troublesome Parisian bishop named Denis by chopping his head off. It might have worked with most people, but Bishop Denis was more stubborn than most. He picked his head up off the ground and stalked off with it, walking with it as far as the nearby village of saint-Denis before conceding to death. They buried him there. The place became a place of miracles and holy relics. And then - starting with Clovis, the first French King, it became the burial place of (almost) all the kings and queens of France.
This is the kind of place I have to see, so rosiespark and I went there by metro today and had a wonderful time.
Here are some photos. Apologies for having the wrong setting on my camera all day - big oops. I'm sure her photos turned out better. But my erroneous settings did rather good on the dark interior shots.
1. The Basilique Saint-Denis as seen across the Place Saint-Denis. It used to have two towers, but the higher one, the north one, was removed in the nineteenth century because it was cracked and unsafe, and never replaced. It gives the place an interesting lopsided look.
The doors and a good part of the exterior are black with grime, and we concluded that the walls have not been cleaned since Violet LeDuc renovated the place in the mid-ninteenth century. Saint-Denis was at the heart of the French Industrial revolution.
2. On the door: a cat-dragon. This was at the bottom of the huge central doors. I love mythological beasts, and I thought this one looked as if it had a cat's head, upside down, and a dragon's body.
3. It was children's day at the basilica, and there were people teaching them how to silkscreen medieval images on t-shirts. I enjoyed this little girl's delight on seeing the griffin image appear on her shirt - put there by herself.
4. The interior of the Basilica of Saint-Denis.
5. Each king of France has his effigy or statue or memorial image. The case of Louis XVI and Marie Antionette was a little different: when they were executed, the basilica had been destroyed by the rvolutionaries, the bones and tombs scattered - to be later reconstructed and repaired in the time of Louis XVIII.
Louis XVIII didn't care, it seems, about anachronisms, and had the statues on the tombs of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette outfitted in Regency style.
6. The floor in the nave has a design of each sign of the zodiac, though some were covered. Here's the design for Gemini.
7. Though almost all the kings and queen of France were there, there was one tomb, one effigy, one man who was not royal at all. His name was Guillaume du Chastel. He died in 1441 and is merely described as the 'panetier du roi' - the king's provisioner.
Among all the kings and queens in fancy robes and crowns, he looked so delightfully different, he was my immediate favourite. Though there were so many magnificent bits.
8. At the foot of a tomb of a prince who died in his teens, is this wonderful scene of two people reading books:
There will be more pictures from me. This is just to whet your appetite.