2009-11-18

See the Medieval Cathedral of Amiens – by night!

The Picardy city of Amiens may not be off the beaten track, and La Cathédrale Notre-Dame is not exactly a hidden gem. For the many thousands of tourists that visit the Somme battlefields, Amiens is always included on their itinerary, and the Cathedral can be seen for miles around. But the Cathedral in colour is one of those attractions few visitors to the city get to see. Sometimes the idea of a sound and light show on the front façade of a cathedral does not have much pulling power. But of all the friends and guests I have taken to see the ’show’, no one has come away disappointed!

During the cleaning of the front of the Cathedral during the early 1990s the restoration team found many traces of paint on the stone carvings. Obviously they had once been painted. But when? From the documentary evidence that survives this painting was not any time recently, but almost certainly in Medieval times when the Cathedral was first built.

See the Medieval Cathedral of Amiens by night!

Now, every year during the summer (mid June to mid September) and then again during December and just after nightfall, the front façade of the Cathedral is lit up just as experts believe it appeared in medieval times. The attention to detail is spectacular. What they have done is transferred a black and white photograph onto a large transparency, and then painstakingly painted in colour the detail of each of the carvings. The painted transparency is then projected back onto the Cathedral from great big light boxes; to truly amazing effect! In principle, this is much the same as projecting a slide onto a wall – but here on a grander and 3-D scale.

The image above shows the front of the cathedral before and after being lit up in colour. The photograph below is of the central portal, which I took during the show. The carvings depict Christ in Majesty presiding over the Day of Judgement while being supported by an array of saints.

See the Medieval Cathedral of Amiens by night!

The show lasts about 45 minutes and a number of lighting effects are used to tell the Medieval story of the Cathedral; it is narrated in both French and English. A sound and light show not to be missed!

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