Visited Église St. Eustache, an impressive work that marries gothic architecture and rennaisance detail and covers under its towering rooftops a vast, intricate web of arches that shelter Rubens artwork and intricate stained glass windows. In its day it was clearly an elaborately adorned testament to the political and cultural power that its worhsippers bore. She has welcomed with Richelieu who was baptised there, Louis XIV who took his communion here as a child and Mozart who chose it to tbe the venue for his mothers funeral.
As with churches all over Europe – it is clear with St. Eustache that the management of this sacred site is a challenge that city managers need to find solutions to: Barely visible are old frescoes and intricate detailing in the building’s walls that could do with some restoration work. The decline of Christianity more broazdly speaking also necessarily means that the significant monetary power of the Catholic church that established buildings such as Saint Eustache no longer exists. Financing and preservation is thus funded out of public porses that are necessarily tied to several, competing and more immediate concerns. One wonders how many more generations will get to enjoy what little is left of buildings of this sort.
Anon's Paris 