NORMANDY 

Rouen Cathedral

History and WWII

Cathedral

Gros Horloge and Place Vieux Marché

Palais de Justice Bourgtheroulde

St.Maclou-Aitre St.Maclou

Church Saint Ouen-Musée des Antiquités

Tour Jeanne-Musée Secq des Tournelles-musee des Beaux Arts

Musée de Faience-Musée Flaubert

Why is Rouen an unavoidable attractive city? An extraordinary cathedral, three essential museums and an old quarter to loiter, just like that, without any reason, raising you nose and eyes.
Much of Rouen’s history is in the open book of the CATHEDRAL. Stand where Claude Monet put up his easel before these great towers of the west front for his series of paintings in 1894 and have a closer look. An elegant lacework of stones, majestic and refined. You are standing in front of one of the most beautiful master works of French gothic. First a cathedral was built by William the Conqueror, just three years before his forces invaded England. You can see that from the brutalism of the lower stages of the TOUR ST.ROMAIN, from the 12th century, Gothic arches soar to the extravagances of the flamboyant style that sets the character for the remainder of the west front.  To your right, the TOUR DU BEURRE, 15th century, 75 m height in the most genuine flamboyant gothic it is named like that because a popular belief says that it has been with the taxes perceived on people who ate butter and drank milk during Lent. Another proof that you can do anything with money !!! Even eat on Lent. So far for equality in treatment ;-). Anyway, soon after construction the tower started to lean, but the cracks were filed and building went on its exquisite conclusion in 1517.
In the centre, three porches, chisel masterworks, a fairytale of stones, presenting all aspects of Gothic art. Even if sometimes it gives away to Renaissance.  Portail St. Jean, St. Etienne are from the 12th century.
The central tower and the spire, of an extreme refinement, is already visible from the rue du Change, completes and unites the composition rising through the 13th to 16th centuries to the lantern which so dramatically lights the space below and supports the tapering spire. The spire is 151 m high, the highest in France. Step back to admire it better. Love it or hate it, but admire the innovative skill of the architect who substituted the wood and lead with, of all things, cast-iron.

Take now the rue Saint-Romain on the other side, and see a stone flamboyant gothic portal, on the transept side, called “La Cour des Libraires”, once filled with booksellers stalls and beyond it the entrance to the north transept through the portail des Libraires. Angels and monsters crowd the pages of this “encyclopaedia of the Middle Ages”. You get the same kind of door at the south side: Porte des Calendes.
Let’s enter and get only to the essentials, even if a bit of culture won’t hurt us. After the rich display of the exterior, first steps inside bring something of anticlimax, of chill even. The very high nave, naked, of an early primitive gothic and the central tower are supported by slim, elegant and clustered columns, never looking massive.

Indeed, the soaring heights, the sheer magnificence of enclosed space and absence of decoration reveal the builders solemn intention.
At the crossing of the transept look up: 51 m separate you from the ceiling. In the left transept an elegant staircase leads you to the library. Very sober 13th century choir? Behind the choir, “the deambulatoire” to see different chapels like the Virgin’s chapel, one of the highlights of the cathedral.
Amongst other tombs of the great and the formidable are those of William I? Duke of Normandy, Richard Lionheart’s brother Henry, the effigy of Richard himself, his heart in a casket in the stone beneath, Cardinal Georges d’Amboise, Louis XII’s minister and virtual ruler of France who gave Rouen fresh water supply and sanitation. Another figure is his nephew, Louis de Brézé, seneschal of Normandy, died 1544, a knight above, a naked corpse below, mourned by a kneeling Diane de Poitiers.
Before leaving look at the Saint-Julien windows in the north choir aisle: admirable stained windows, where Flaubert found inspiration to write a novel of a man destined to kill his parents.

Bibliography

A holiday history of France, by Ronald Hamilton (London-Hogarth press), Region Normandie, ses merveilles, ses cicatrices, by Louis Letellier (ed. Cloison, Rouen 1995), Routard 1998 (Hachette, Paris), France today, by John Ardagh (London, Secker and Warburgh), Writer’s France, by John Ardagh (London, Hamish Hamilton)