Let those who think I embody inflexibility take note: I planned a trip to see the cathedral at Laon yesterday, but while standing in line I saw that the train to Amiens left 20 minutes earlier, and so, with Railpass in hand, I jumped on the train for Amiens. The pictures I've seen of both town and cathedral were really the spark for this trip, and with good reason.
If a movie were made of the saga of cathedral construction in the Middle Ages, there would have to be a scene in which all the leading architects bid for his own church's superlative. "I get to have the widest aisle!" "I get the tallest nave!" "I'll have the biggest cathedral in all of France!" "Well then, mine gets the highest clerestory and the most towers!" The architect for Amiens would have won two of those accolades.
Depending on which source you check, the Cathedral of Our Lady of Amiens is listed as the largest cathedral in France, with the tallest nave, and I choose to believe those claims. Although the entrance faces a public square, the church is otherwise enclosed by still-medieval streets and houses and doesn't appear from the outside to be as large as Chartres or Notre Dame - Paris. Once you enter the church, though, it's hard to take in the size and height of this building. The side chapels, which in other churches are maybe 12 x 8 feet, are spacious and ring almost the entire interior. The aisles and ambulatory are wider than any other church I've seen, and the great height of the nave is made to seem even taller by the light color of the walls and ceiling and the predominantly white glass used in the upper windows. Where stained glass does appear it is all the more dramatic for its intense coloration, its mosaic designs, and the unusual use of yellow, particularly in the south transept window.
To the visitor, Amiens feels lighter, taller and more graceful than earlier churches, but because of updates that were undertaken over the years, it doesn't have that same medieval quality of Chartres or Notre Dame - Paris, or the other smaller churches I've seen. Changes made in the 14th, 16th and 19th centuries included painting some features with gold and the placement of wrought iron work, both of which seem distracting and out of character with the simpler elegance of the original construction.
Interestingly, posters in the Amiens train station depict the cathedral as "The Cathedral of Color", which I didn't understand until Wiki told me: "During the process of laser cleaning in the 1990s, it was discovered that the western façade of the cathedral was originally painted in multiple colors. A technique was perfected to determine the exact make-up of the colors as they were applied in the 13th century. Then, in conjunction with the laboratories of EDF (Electricity of France) and the expertise of the Society Skertzo, elaborate lighting techniques were developed to project these colors directly on the façade with precision, recreating the polychromatic appearance of the 13th century. When projected on the statues around the portals, the result is a stunning display that brings the figures to life. Since the projected colors are very difficult to photograph, the accompanying picture provides only a general idea of the result"
HERE and HERE are two good sources of information on Amiens Cathedral and below are some of the pictures I took -- easier this time as the cathedral was so light inside.
I would have liked to have seen more of the town of Amiens, which is in the Picardy/Picardie district and is primarily an agricultural center, judging by the scenery from the train, but it was SO DAMN COLD I could do nothing but shiver my way to and from the traiin station. It's an hour and a half from Paris, which puts it much farther north than these goosebumps are used to. Next trip is Tuesday, two hours south to Bourges.
The picture below is from Wikipedia, the illustration of how the original entrance would have appeared (referenced in the link above).
