Ruth Paget: Visiting Amiens Cathedral in Picardy, France with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Amiens Cathedral in Picardy, France with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

On the way back from Arras (France), which we had visited during Memorial Day weekend, my husband and I stopped in Amiens to visit the Cathedral.

Notre Dame d’Amiens is twice as large as Notre Dame de Paris. The Cathedral was built between 1220 and 1269. Its architectural symmetry is pleasing to the eye.

You have to walk up to the Cathedral on steps with platforms at fifteen or so steps. Each platform requires you to turn at a ninety-degree angle to a new set of steps before you reach the Cathedral plaza.

The platforms would be good places for jugglers, clowns, people who do handstands and walk on their hands, and Amiens’ own marionettes featuring Lafleur, who does not like to work.

The Cathedral’s interior nave features a six-sided labyrinth at its center. I have seen labyrinths at the cathedrals at Chartres (floor) and at Poitiers (wall), but the one at Amiens could be displayed while still making room for chairs at services.

Putting chairs around the labyrinth incorporates the labyrinth into the life of the people as a way to do a symbolic pilgrimage after mass. Picardy is remote. Expenses would have kept most parishioners from doing a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella, Rome, or Jerusalem. The day that we visited a family was walking the labyrinth, keeping the tradition alive.

There are symmetrical geometric designs that run the length of the nave. Geometry as is illustrated in the Carnet de Villard de Honnecourt XIII Siecle edited by Alain Erlande-Bendenburg et al formed the design foundation of the Gothic architecture and sculpture as it did in the Renaissance. The difference between the Gothic and the Renaissance lies in the fact that the Renaissance artists knew about musculature and the skeleton and could render life-life images using perspective. This knowledge especially affected the treatment of clothing in the two periods.

As we left the Cathedral, rain set in. Everything became dark and dank. It was easy to understand how a beautiful Cathedral could become the focal point of a agricultural-turned-industrial community. Notre Dame d’Amiens will always be a draw for locals and tourists alike.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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