Notre-Dame de Rouen Cathedral · A Video Postcard

It was once the tallest building in the world and its history began before Columbus sailed for the New World. My first memories of the Rouen Cathedral were as a teenager, looking at Monet’s famous paintings of its facade, ever-changing with light’s play.

Later on, I would read David McCollough’s The Greater Journey and the accounts of some of the first Americans to see this landmark. For many, the journey to Paris involved a stopover in Rouen to see this gothic marvel.

Emma Willard would write in her journal, “I had heard of fifty or a hundred years being spent in the erection of a building, and I had often wondered how it could be; but when I saw even the outside of this majestic and venerable temple, the doubt ceased.”

The writer, James Fenimore Cooper explained the common feeling among Americans who had made the voyage across the ocean deemed that it had been worth doing so if only to see this cathedral.

And like so many before, I stood under this massive work, marveling at what was possible centuries ago.