July 19 Paris

July 19

During our last day in Paris, we decided to visit inside some famous buildings we had walked past, starting with Notre Dame.

Beautiful stained glass window.

Another beautiful window, lighting this statue.

Next, we visited another church on l'Ile de la Cité, Sainte Chapelle. This is a much smaller church, built by King Louis IX (also known as Saint Louis) as a private chapel for the royal family. Getting to the chapel requires passing through tight security, similar to an airport, as it is located within the courtyard of the Paris courthouse, Le Palais de Justice.

Nice ceiling patterns.

Most of the walls are glass.

Blue seems to be used a lot. The chapel was built in the 1240's.

We then visited the Pantheon. This is a beautiful building built in the 1740's by Louis XV. It was modeled on the Pantheon in Rome. The Roman one was built in 126 AD.

View from the upper bacony.

From the roof, you get a great view of Notre Dame.

Also a good view of the Eiffel Tower, seen behind Darlene and Paulette.

The building is used to hold the tombs of many famous French citizens. They are in the basement of the building, called the crypt. Here we see the tombs of 3 famous writers: Victor Hugo on the left, Emile Zola on the right and Alexandre Dumas in the back.

The last building we visited is the Musée du Moyen Age (Middle Ages), in the Cluny building. As you can see, the building itself is very old.

These are status of earlier French Kings, names were not given.

The museum has a large collection of medieval tapestries.

The most famous is a series known as The Maiden and the Unicorn. This is one of 5 that were on display.

Back on our street, rue Saint Jacques. Kitty corner from our hotel was this famous building, the Sorbonne University.