Basilica of St Denis : 2013-08

I visited the Basilica of St Denis north of Paris as it is one of those must-see locations. The abbey is where all but three of the monarchs of France from the 10th century until 1789 have their remains. There are some amazing works throughout the church. A couple examples are below.

I was amazed at some of the detail in these marble statues. I had to take a picture of the king and queen (on the left) because of the detailed muscles. And, I think the artist took a little artistic liberty. In other words, I'm not sure the king and queen were in this kind of physical shape when they passed. The picture on the right is of Louis XVI. I think I looked at this statue for at least 10 minutes. The detail was incredible. That's all I can say. The full statue, with Marie Antoinette, is below. Another interesting thing about the statue is the artists are Edme Gaulle and Pierre Petitot. The relationship is Edme Gaulle made the two bull heads à la fontaine du marché des Blancs-Manteaux which I had seen earlier on a Paris Walks tour in the Jewish quartier. They are also shown below.

 Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette (l) and the stained glass windows (r)

On the left, you can see the nice light from the stained glass striking the floor of the church. I assumed the lady on the right was trying to capture this effect. I was surprised that she was even in there painting (must require a special abbey-pass) and equally surprised with her paintings. For me it was almost impossible to interpret what she was painting. Kinda surreal overall.

 

I don't think I've ever seen the signs of the zodiac in a church before - so a picture was required (they are on the floor). On the right is one of the two bull heads by Gaulle mentioned earlier.

I was pretty pleased with this panoramic of the side windows of the church. If you look closely, you might see something I recently realized...the iPhone has some problems with curves. You can see the jumps in the arches of the ceiling. But they're still amazing pictures and I like this one.