Reims was on the front lines during the First World War and the city was very heavily damaged by German bombs. Unfortunately, that means that much of today's city isn't that pretty and doesn't have the same "old" charm that one sees in so many French cities - big and small. Since much was rebuild post-war, the city has a strange, and not very successful, mix of architecture. You can see a picture of bombed-out Reims here.
The cathedral, Notre-Dame de Reims, was built in 1211 on the site of a series of older churches, and is famous in French history as the place where the majority of French kings were crowned. It all started in 496, when then-bishop Saint Rémi (who gave his name to the city; inhabitants of Reims are called rémois or rémoise) baptized the Frankish (read: heathen) leader Clovis and crowned him the first King of the Franks. This title would later evolve to King of the French and finally King of France. You can read more about the cathedral here.
Notre-Dame de Reims
there are lots of really interesting gargoyles on the façade of the cathedral
the rose windows of the cathedral, while not original, are magnificent
artist Marc Chagall designed these windows in the apse
(he also has several windows in the cathédrale de Metz!)
the cathedral has the 5th-highest nave in France, after Beauvais, Amiens, Metz and Narbonne
Basilique Saint-Rémi
unfortunately there was a private funeral going on so we couldn't go inside...
The region around Reims and a smaller city, Épernay, is where pinot noir, chardonnay and pinot meunier grapes are grown, harvested and then turned into champagne. Sparkling wines that come from any other region are not allowed to be called "champagne" since the appellation is reserved uniquely for products of this region.
We visited the caves of G.H. Martel & Co. and had a tour where we learned all about the champagne-producing process. It's quite complicated; mostly time consuming - the two fermentations last a minimum of three years, and usually more like five! After the tour we had a tasting of three different champagnes, a premier cru, a rosé and a grand cru.
We walked over to the Taittinger caves too, but their "compound" was so antiseptic and uninviting that we decided to head back to the center of town for some vin chaud at the marché de Noël instead.
a festive end to a very nice day!
don't cringe Kap! I want to try to learn. Please teach me. Can you try to spell it out for us so we can attempt to pronounce it correctly?! It's just so unfair that you can say it and I can't and then you say you'll cringe at me if I even try! :) I'm mostly just interested to see what the crazy french are up to now with their letter dropping and adding.
ReplyDeleteReims (often spelled Rheims in English, not that the H really helps anything!) could sort of be pronounced "rance" but the R is the French R (not rolled with the tongue like in Spanish, but not in the mouth like in English either, it's more of a throat thing and sort of sounds like you're going to cough something up) and the AN is nasalized and sounds something like "enh?". And the CE is like at the end of the English word "ice". Maybe then faking a vague southern (USA) accent on top of it all would help... You could also sort of think of it as being somewhere between "rance" and "rinse"... If you pronounce "rinse" with French phonetics, *that's* pretty much exactly it...
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