Rouen I

THE CITY: Rouen was one of the important cities I had never seen. I was aware that the city was heavily damaged during the Second World War, and that it had been restored; but everything I had read made we want to see for myself. The reconstruction is generally considered successful. The historic center seemed small enough to walk everywhere. During the four days I was there I walked everywhere in the old town and discovered a concentration of landmarks, churches, and museums amid shops, pedestrian streets, and cafes. The blend of old and new evoked a lively and contemporary city, not at all a touristy museum location.

The magnitude of the destruction was clear from the first place I chose to visit, the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Rouen. That realization put my subsequent walks through the town in perspective. Photographs displayed in the south transept of the cathedral showed how the south façade was demolished by the bombing in 1944 and explained why the cathedral was still standing today. The bombs did not affect the fourth chapel whose flying buttresses sustained the south wall; had they fallen, the entire cathedral would have collapsed.

Rouen was burned in 1940 and bombed in 1944 and evidence of destruction is visible even without graphic explanations. There is shell damage on the cathedral, modern buildings are scattered among many (often restored) half-timbered houses, and it is clear that the ancient marketplace and the area around it had been flattened. The devastation in France was so great that a ministry was created to oversee various reconstruction projects; in Rouen the ministry named Henri Greber in 1941 as the chief urban planner for the region. By 1941 he was famous and held in high esteem. A graduate of the Beaux-Arts in Paris, he went to the United States in 1910 to design gardens and work with architects in Philadelphia on the plan for the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. The city of Rouen approved his design in 1942, but it took a long time for the work to be carried out.

THE CATHEDRAL: The Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Rouen is a Gothic masterpiece. The first cathedral dates from about the 4th c.; only the Romanesque crypt remains. The reconstruction of the roman church began in 1020; it was consecrated in 1063. At that time the bodies of Rollo and William Longsword were transferred there. The Saint Roman tower was begun in 1145. In 1185 the Romanesque nave was replaced by one in gothic style. The west façade was completed about 1215. The second, south tower, called the «Tour de Beurre » (the Butter Tower), was begun in 1488. Its name is due to the fact that it was financed by donations requested from parishioners who confessed to eating butter during Lent.

Over time the cathedral suffered many disasters. A fire in 1200 damaged the cathedral, especially the Romanesque nave which had to be replaced. By 1506 there was structural damage; in 1514 the central wood spire (lantern tower) caught fire; in 1562 the church was pillaged by protestants; in 1683 a hurricane devastated the cathedral; in 1793 the church was again pillaged; and in 1822 lightning struck the spire. Then there was the bombing of April 19, 1944, and most recently in 1999, the severe windstorm that knocked down part of the central spire (its third accident) and sent it into the vaulting over the choir. That spire is 495 feet tall, the tallest in France.

Once inside, my first impression of the nave was its elegance. Long lines of columns and a spacious volume led to a the gothic vault almost 100 feet above me. This is a majestic gothic cathedral, as lovely as many others in France. The windows, now sending glowing color onto the floors and walls of the cathedral, were taken down in 1939 and stored in the dungeon in the town of Niort (south of Nantes), saving them from certain destruction.

Next to the choir is the tomb of Rollo (Rollon in French), but it is a 19th c copy and it is empty. It is significant, however, because it honors the Viking who converted to Catholicism, took the name of Robert, and became the first Duke of Normandy. He was an exceptional administrator whose construction of the port of Rouen remained unchanged until the 19th c.

The tomb of Richard I (the Lionheart), King of England and Duke of Normandy, once contained his heart in a lead reliquary, now stored in the cathedral Treasury. His body is buried next to his father at Fontevraud Abbey. At the time, it was not uncommon for the heart to be buried separately – a way of symbolizing power in more than one place.

In the north transept there is a beautiful and unusual structure I had not seen in any cathedral before this. It was the gothic stone staircase which led to the chapter library. The base dates from 1479; the upper part from the 18th c.

Claude Monet painted the cathedral many times in different light. http://www.learn.columbia.edu/monet/swf/

http://www.cathedrale-rouen.net/patrimoine/insolite/choix.htm