Photo: Travel: France: Amiens

The cathedral of Amiens is thus far my absolute favorite. Although I am very partial to English gothic, I prefer the soaring French cathedrals in that style. Of these, Amiens is among the most famous, and deservedly so. When we walked onto the cathedral square in the early morning, it stopped me dead in my tracks. The sight was stunning even though the west end was still in deep shadow. The cathedral survived the war almost intact, has recently been cleaned (except for the south side which was being cleaned when we visited), and many of the scuptures on the screen have been restored. (Sadly, we arrived half an hour too late the night before to see the laser light show.) Although stripped of color, the west facade is beautiful in proportion, design, and style. Inside the spacious church can easily take hours to explore (which we did). One could walk the labyrinth in the nave, admire the painted carvings on both sides of the quire, stare at the many sculptures scattered everywhere, peek into the chapels of the ambulatory, or crawl to examine the misericords in the quire. There is not much stained glass and the paintings are few. But no matter, it is the architecture, the majestic sacred space inside, that is by far the most memorable. One really does not understand gothic until one visits a French cathedral, that's what I found out. Unfortunately, we had to cut our visit short because there was a service (and it turned out that the church had not actually been opened to tourists, we had sort of walked in without realizing it). The downside is that I could not take more pictures in the quire, and of the famous carvings. The upside was that we had the enormous church mostly to ourselves until we had to leave. When we came back a few hours later, it was thronged with tourists like us, which of course totally ruined the experience. The photos in this gallery a labor of love: over 400 of them, all lovingly retouched by hand. It's my tribute to the amazing builders of this cathedral.