Monday Aril 6. Reims. (11.8 km)

A warm sunny day today. My advance accommodation bookings from Canada having run out, a first task was locating places to stay tomorrow and the next day. I’d forgotten how much time this task can take!

Lots of relaxing going on in Reims today. Big avenues, lots of trees, many pedestrian-only streets all make this city seem airy and quiet.

The city was once the Roman capital of Gallia Belgica, this northern part of the Empire. What is considered the longest surviving Roman arch was preserved over the centuries by being part of the Archbishop’s palace. When the palace got destroyed in the 16th century the arch was rediscovered.

It looks like the Archbishops had themselves a fine palace! A reminder that the church, its authorities and its monks in abbeys throughout Europe were powerful landowners and political players.

The main site to visit in Reims is the cathedral. Built in the thirteenth century, it is one of France’s finest gothic cathedrals. It was here in an earlier version of the building that Clovis, who united all the Francs in what could be considered the first Frankish kingdom, or the first kingdom of what we now know as France, converted to Christianity and was baptized in 496. Six French kings were crowned in the earlier church on this site, and 25 in the current cathedral, all building on the legacy of Clovis, and in fact all receiving a few drops of a balm found in a bottle beside Clovis’ body when it was removed from a grave to be placed in a reliquary. The next picture is a medieval depiction of St Remi baptizing Clovis, followed by a photo of the cathedral.

Three windows in the cathedral are the work of Marc Chagall. In many of Chagall’s paintings people and animals are floating in the air. Here it seems like the figures are floating in air, swirling in the depths of water, floating in a living, moving eternity.

There is a slightly older Basilica in town which holds the relics of St Remi (the person who baptized Clovis). What is interesting here is you can clearly see how the early Romanesque church was extended upward as the Gothic building methods started permitting more height (rounded arches are Romanesque, pointed ones are Gothic). The large circle candelabra is lowered every year on the feast day of St Remi, and its hundreds of candles are lit.

And now I’m very tired, so will conclude the tale of today in tomorrow’s blog.

Diamant brut. 9 g os sugar. Non brut are sweeter. Half Chardonnay and half pinot noir. I think i prefer cava.

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Celia Walks

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