Wow, sunny Sunday afternoons are just tourist mayhem around the 4ième. Luckily, this is a fact of which I’m only occasionally reminded, since – after the busy weekdays out and about – I've been enjoying spending the weekends back at the studio.
After this morning’s rain, I popped out to enjoy an hour’s sunshine and to find that, just a stone’s throw outside the quiet and calm of the Cité, the queues around the block to enter Notre Dame are almost as spectacular as the extravagant gothic architecture of the cathedral itself.
However, I passed by the sightseeing circus on my way to see the considerably more sedate Eglise St Séverin, with it’s elegant palm-tree columns and vaulted ceiling and which turns out to have some luminous stained glass, including some quite striking modern designs by Jean René Bazaine.
Also on display were some works on paper (a contemporary take on the Stations of the Cross) alongside a permanent collection of Rouault’s ink drawings, in one of the chapels.
I also visited the church of St Julien le Paurvre, adjacent to the Square René-Viviani – where, legend has it, Paris’ oldest tree (a robinier planted in 1602) promises a long and fortunate life to those who brave the pelouse interdit to rub its trunk!
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