{"id":1184,"date":"2013-05-12T08:14:58","date_gmt":"2013-05-12T13:14:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/?p=1184"},"modified":"2025-06-04T15:58:06","modified_gmt":"2025-06-04T20:58:06","slug":"paris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/2013\/05\/12\/paris\/","title":{"rendered":"Paris"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I am writing after a long and satisfying day in Paris, exploring and above all experiencing.\u00a0\u00a0In the morning, we went to Notre Dame to visit one of the most magnificent Gothic churches in the world.\u00a0\u00a0Constructed (literally) \"\"<\/a>from the 12th<\/sup>\u00a0through the 19th<\/sup>\u00a0centuries, its flying buttresses and facades are so central to Gothic\u2014and France\u2014that distances in the country are literally measured from a spot in front of the Cathedral.\u00a0\u00a0We were there for the 10 am mass, which was performed with a Gregorian choir.\u00a0\u00a0The interior is relatively spare, but the stained glass windows and the height make it a picture story\u2014say about the Hunchback of Notre Dame!<\/p>\n

Professor Pana and I used the time between the mass and our next departure, for Versailles, to spend a little over an hour (about two hours too \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a>few) at the nearby Museum of the Middle Ages, better known perhaps by its former location as the home of the Abbots of Cluny. The most famous possessions of the Cluny\u2014alas\u2014the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries\u2014were on loan to a museum in Tokyo, but the other relics, including some from Byzantium (the 4th<\/sup> crusade detoured from the Holy Land to Byzantium and ransacked the city, stripped the empire of a number of possessions \u2013and goodies, such as the horses of St Mark, now in Venice after having been \u201cborrowed\u201d by Napoleon for the Arc de Triomphe) that really are works of art.\u00a0\u00a0In addition, the Cluny sits on what was a Roman bath in the first century BC, a testimony to the lengthy history of settlement on the banks of the Seine.<\/p>\n

\"\"We spent the afternoon at the Chateau of Versailles, begun as a modest hunting lodge for Louis XIII, but expanded by his son, the Sun King Louis XIV, to become the premier castle, and I believe the largest, certainly in Europe, and one that puts Windsor Castle into the minor leagues. The world class attraction seemed to have attracted the world this Sunday, as the rooms were as crowded as could be.\u00a0\u00a046,000 workers labored to bring the finest the French monarchy could obtain to the Chateau.\u00a0\u00a0It came close to bankrupting France, a process that culminated, when the spending to fight Britain and incidentally help the US gain independence, precipitated the French Revolution.\u00a0\u00a0In the meantime, the Bourbon kings (XIV, XV, XVI\u2014sounds like super bowls, don\u2019t they) enjoyed the facilities.\u00a0\u00a0They say Louis XIV built it, XV enjoyed it, and XVI paid for it. We had a lively discussion involving those who have traveled elsewhere in Europe, and the closest rivals we could come up with were St. Petersburg\u2014and the Vatican St. Peters.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The best features inside might well have been the Hall of Mirrors, where in 1919, the Allies imposed the Treaty of Versailles on the Germans. Other treaties ending the war against other central powers also occurred on the property\u2014Hungary was divided (\u201cThe Worst Treaty in History,\u201d intoned our guide in Budapest three years ago!) at Trianon, for example.\u00a0\u00a0The lavish decorations at similar palaces always make me wonder why it took over 3 centuries for the Revolutions to occur!<\/p>\n

The overall best features, however, might well have been the outside gardens, \"\"<\/a>which did not have the crowds, but did have landscape and solitude.\u00a0The outside has been restored since I was last here, and one of the features, the Bath of Apollo, looked for all the world like something on the Canadian shield I had portaged until I saw the statuary; that wasn\u2019t me schlepping a canoe, though come to think of it\u2026..<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I was thinking, \u201cI\u2019ve seen it all\u201d when a newly-resurrected waterfall appeared as we turned a corner.\u00a0\u00a0We were lucky because for two and a half hours a day, water flows and falls in the gardens and period classical music gets piped over the loudspeaker.<\/p>\n

While Peter the Great would love to have duplicated Versailles at the Peterhof, and the Hungarians, Indochinese, and French in China would love to have been the Paris of the East, or a second Paris, when you come here, you\u2019ll understand why I think there\u2019s only ONE Paris!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am writing after a long and satisfying day in Paris, exploring and above all experiencing.\u00a0\u00a0In the morning, we went to Notre Dame to visit one of the most magnificent Gothic churches in the world.\u00a0\u00a0Constructed (literally) from the 12th\u00a0through the 19th\u00a0centuries, its flying buttresses and facades are so central to Gothic\u2014and France\u2014that distances in the … Continue reading “Paris”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-may-term-2013"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1184"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9440,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1184\/revisions\/9440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}