The Bells of Notre Dame

Since 1856, the Bells of Notre Dame have been out of tune with each other. This has been pretty well known, and there was a move a while back to raise money to replace them (all but the biggest one - called The Bourdon Emmanuel) so that they sound better.

But of course, since these bells were very old, they kept them and put them on display behind the cathedral:

Doreen felt sorry for the bells, so we took their photos.

I always understood that church bells were used to stockpile brass that could be melted down to use in cannons in times of war. If you are familiar with Wikipedia, this is where they would have a little (citation needed) indicator.

Here are the bells in action:


and again:



and ringing in noon:

Some of you may recall that Doreen has a degree in Art History. One of the artists she studied was name Thomas Shotter-Boys, and back when we were on the Grand Tour she had wanted to find some of his prints. As luck would have it, and as some of you know, she found one:

and back when we bought that print, we also took a photo of the real Red Door:

That was back in May of 2000. (While it seems like Yesterday, it was almost 14 years ago!)

Here is the photo we took of the Red Door on this past trip:

While it might be hard to tell with the photos, the damaged trefoil was repaired sometime in the past 14 years.

I sort of have mixed emotions about that. I always like to think that it was damaged in the Revolution, and the damage itself was part of the history of the cathedral.

But none the less, Notre Dame is my favorite building in Paris.

Make that simply my favorite building.