Masterpiece in Strasbourg

The first thought that entered my head as I stared up to behold the massive and beautiful Cathedrale Notre-Dame of Strasbourg, France was, “how did they build that?”

This cathedral is extraordinarily beautiful and fantastic in scale. The attention to detail is incredible. I thought about the number of decades and the number of skilled artisans that labored for years so that we could appreciate this masterpiece of architecture and art.

I’ve been to the Cathedrale in Chatres and the Cathedrale of Notre-Dame in Paris but I was never aware of the existence of this cathedral. It was a pleasant surprise to come upon it while visiting Strasbourg on my way to Germany last year. We had several hours to spare so we walked around the entire circumference of the structure admiring the work, finally entering inside to take a look at it’s many stained glass windows, sculptures, vaulted ceiling and columns.

I spent a long time inside, looking at everything and taking in the ambience. I took pictures of everything but unfortunately I was working with my daughter’s point-and-shoot Cybershot so the pictures weren’t that great. My main camera ran out of juice.

I noticed a considerable large crowd gathered in the transept to the right of the apse. That’s when I noticed the second masterpiece inside this cathedral: The Strasbourg Astronomical Clock.

Once again, I was very pleasantly surprised. I wanted to know all about this clock but all the information available at the time from the skimpy pamphlet was in French. I had to wait till I got an internet connection to learn all about this clock. You can read about it in this Wikipedia article.

For this week’s photo challenge, this astronomical clock and the cathedral it resides in definitely shows just two examples of the dizzying collection of art around the world that truly defines what is a masterpiece.