Woke up this morning to the rain coming down pretty good outside -- so decided to do what you do in Paris when it's raining -- go to a museum -- or in this case a Basilica and a museum. Located within a few blocks of each other and way off the tourist path, the Basilique de St Denis and the Musee d'Art and d'Histoire complement each other in that they are both part of the same complex dating back hundreds of years. The Basilique is a church and the Musee was a convent (associated with the church) that has been converted into a museum.
The basilica, dating from the early 400's, was built on the site of a much earlier Greco-Roman cemetery, as well as the site of the tomb of St Denis (he was the guy who was beheaded, picked-up his head, tucked it under his arm and continued walking around town preaching -- or so the legend goes). It was built as a site of pilgrimage and to honor St Denis but during the 5th century, it became the "fashionable place" for royalty to be buried and since then almost all of the kings and queens of France have been buried there (42 kings and 32 queens) -- including Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette (although other legends have her being tossed into a mass grave for burial -- so someone has their story wrong.)
In the 12th century, the Basilica was rebuilt using new architectural techniques and is considered to be the first Gothic structure built in France. Over the years it was ravaged by numerous wars and civil unrest but was restored in the 19th century to pretty much it's current appearance. It contains Europe's largest collection of funerary art with the faces of many of the recumbent (lying down) figures made from actual death masks which makes them very lifelike!
It also contains an exhibit of clothing modeled after what female royalty would've worn -- quite lovely although somewhat exagerated "height-wise" -- they apparently added another three feet of material at the bottoms to make them seem more "majestic".
The interior of the Basilica is exquisite and then when you start wandering among the statues and carvings and paintings, finally descending into the royal crypt, it's a little awesome. The crypt is pretty good-sized and somewhat dark with what appears to be the original stonework walls and floor -- today I was on my own (maybe another half dozen people down there) -- it can get a little spooky with all those dead people around. In one of the poorly lit photos showing six dark coffins, the one on the left in the middle is supposedly Marie Antoinette and the one on the right in the middle is Louis XVI with the one of his father Louis XV at his feet. (Aiming to get photos up by tomorrow -- switched cameras and the new camera doesn't seem to want to download -- talking with my technical person this evening to hopefully get it resolved.)
The Museum is housed in a former Carmelite convent that served as a hospital starting in the early 1700's and contains an interesting display of items from that hospital as well as recreated nun's quarters and information describing their daily "fixed" routine and how they lived (not a fun life). NOTE: Frank -- one of the photos I took specially for you -- the keys to the convent -- go get'em! -- sorry, they wouldn't let me send you the actual keys).
A section of the building is also devoted to the early 1870's when France was kicked-out of Mexico, the Prussians invaded (putting Paris under a lengthy seige so bad that people were fighting over rats for food) and the citizens of Paris staged a revolt against the monarchy -- kind of a busy couple years.
Then it was back to the Metro, picked-up a few things at the farmers' market (and a bottle of wine -- think I'm closing in on my goal of trying wine from 150 wineries) and head for the apartment. It's still raining five hours after I started this morning but today was a good day!
