Peregrinating Pair: Notre Dame de Paris

One reason returning to Paris was so attractive this winter was to see the things we missed last year. There were so many construction closures of venues being prepped for the Olympics, there were places we weren't able to see. And of course, there is Notre Dame. Brian, having first visited Paris in the autumn of 2019, had never been inside it. My last visit to Notre Dame was in December 2012, when I entered in the dark of night and sat my atheist self through half a mass.

But the post-fire reconstruction is (mostly) complete and the church has been reconsecrated and reopened to the public, as of December 7^th 2024. I was eager to get inside and see it, so I hit refresh each morning on the website for visiting. There is a free ticketed entry, tho of course with an optional donation, but it is only available for a limited number of people and only two calendar days out. I found three spots available on Tuesday, but very early in the morning. Due to our late train back from Strasbourg, that was not attractive. One spot opened Wednesday, but 30 minutes out. We couldn’t get there in that time frame. Finally, on Thursday a 2pm spot opened. Then it was taken before I managed to fill in our contact information. One more refresh and a 2:30pm spot showed up. I managed to snag it.

On the way there we were hit by rain, then hail, then high winds, and finally gorgeous blue skies. Winter in France. But that was lucky, because the stained-glass windows showed their full beauty with the sun (brief as it was). The rest of the church was honestly unsettling.

All the news outlets have published photos of the interior and its white stone walls and vaulted ceilings. As I said before, I was last there at night. But previous daytime visits were still in darkness, thanks to the aging and staining of the stone. The whiteness is visually jarring. But the other senses are equally jangled. Old (Catholic) churches have a certain scent: a bit of lingering incense, damp wool, stone dust, wood polish. Notre Dame has none of these (yet) and smells like nothing. The reconstruction upgraded the HVAC system, so there is also the faint hissing of the airflow adding to the auditory experience.

All in all, the beauty of the structure is offset with a feeling of alienness. But I expect it will be broken in again soon. The pipe organ will be played, the censer swung, the tourist bodies will crowd in, and the new car smell will dissipate.

~Lucy