Interior of Notre Dame

Here are a few random shots of the interior of Notre Dame. The whole time I kept thinking about my medieval students and how they would love this!

 

I'm hoping I can add a large version of the window, but we'll see.

 

There were so many lovely Gothic pieces here. The rose windows are famous of course and with good reason. (And no picture can do them justice!)

 

 There are some lovely panels illustrating the life of Jesus and the life of Mary.

The interior is spacious and grand with the broken arches that characterize the gothic period.

 

This Madonna is quite well known.

 

Notre Dame was one of the first churches to use the flying buttresses around the nave. Evidently the walls got so high and thin, that they developed  stress fractures, so the buttresses and sculpture were added to strengthen the skeletal structure of the cathedral.

 

The church was completed in 1345. (Almost 200 years after it was begun in 1160 by Bishop Sully.)