An unexpected delight even though in poor condition

Evreux -- The Cathedral Notre-Dame

On the way back to Paris we stopped at Evreux, a town that had been pretty beaten up over the ages starting with the Vandals in the 5^th century. The Germans and then the Allies kicked it again in that WWII thing.

The Cathedral was battered but beautiful and our 10 minute stopped turned into an hour. We hope to write more later but here's our pictures:

Nothing symbolizes the past glory and the beat-up condition of this cathedral more than its bent spire:

The only entry is off a busy street on the North side of the cathedral. You can see our party at the bottom of this picture:

Serious flying buttresses

Things, looking up

Although gothic, this church contains a dome:

Here's what the dome looks like inside:

Here's the same picture but with Ev and Dick:

Inside at the far east end is a chapel added later. Its stain glass is beautiful and fortunately the French government has allocated about US$1 Million to further restore these windows:

Here's the same chapel from the outside:

Taking the long views

At the edge of the chapel, here's the view through to the opposite end of this narrow and graceful cathedral:

From the opposite end you see this:

At the transept you can see the rose windows. Here's the south one:

The west facade

Outside, here's the west façade which should be the highlight but is in pretty bad shape. We can't figure out if the south tower ever had a top to match its neighbor on the left:

Close up, the west façade looks even worse, like the statues have long been stolen from their niches. To compensate, the townspeople have kept up their Christmas lights:

There's four more pictures of the cathedral on another page. Get to them by clicking here:

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