Matthew Kelly
Notre Dame de Paris
Notre Dame, the team with freshly painted gold helmets and classic uniforms. The Fighting Irish is all I knew as I arrived in Paris, but it became apparent to me that Notre Dame is a spectacular cathedral in the heart of Paris when we were given a mini sightseeing tour by our taxi driver upon arrival. We drove down Quai de la Tournelle, distracted by bits of the Eiffel Tower in the skyline as our driver realizes that we are missing the real sights right in front of our eyes along the Seine River. He starts pointing out buildings of significance on the left and right, but our attention was taken by the sight of this massive church with flying buttresses, pinnacles, and a nave roof. We ask the driver, “what is that on the right?” as he gives us a little chuckle and declares “Notre Dame of course!” We suddenly felt stupid but the sight allowed us to forget about that in an instant as we snapped as many pictures as we could despite weaving through traffic.
We met for class in front of Notre Dame and I realized I made the right decision to study abroad this summer just from my first view of the two tall towers, and the three “story-line” arches on the front side of Notre Dame Cathedral. As we waited in line we received a lesson about the three arches and how the art of each have a story behind them relating to Jesus, Satan, and the bible. After that, we observed the statues lined up along the top of the arches and learned that they were once beheaded in false accusation of being the kings of France, now the statues on display are replicas.
I love seeing spectacular Catholic Churches, Cathedral’s, Duomo’s, and Basilica’s because it is essentially the house of God. Some people look at it as disgraceful that there are these massive expensive structures for a religion that preaches help and forgiveness of others while there are still people without running water or food on the table in our world. I see it as a home of God who opens his doors for anyone; the man that sleeps in the metro tunnels, and the man that sleeps in a set of silk sheets. I walked through the cathedral as a service was going on in French and I felt a sense of home because of the similarity of the procedure of a catholic mass. The little wooden models inside the cathedral, of the process of how Notre Dame was made, really put into perspective of how amazing the structure truly is. The peasant builders used a human mouse wheel system as a crane to get bricks high enough to build Notre Dame. On top of all that, Notre Dame is built on top of roman ruins from hundreds of years ago. There is so much history on one island; roman ruins, the beginning of Paris, and Notre Dame. Needless to say, the architecture of Notre Dame really grabbed me in the sense that it is spectacular in its history, religion, and appearance.