Amiens - Scènes de la Vie de St.-Jacques

            The Postcard

A postally unused carte postale that was published by Lévy Fils et Cie of Paris. The card has a divided back.

Amiens Cathedral

The Gothic Cathedral of our Lady of Amiens is the tallest complete cathedral in France, with the greatest interior volume (estimated at 200,000 cubic metres).  

According to this estimate, the cathedral could comfortably accommodate well over sixty billion marbles. (Yes, billion, not million!) This number of marbles, laid end to end, would produce a line 900,000 km long - it would encircle the earth 22 times, or stretch to the moon and back nearly two and a half times.  It's a big building!

The vaults of the nave are 42.3 metres high. 

Amiens is the chief city of Picardy, in the valley of the River Somme, and is just over 100 km north of Paris.

Work on the cathedral started in 1220 and was mostly finished by 1266. The floors include a number of designs, including a swastika.  The labyrinth was installed in 1288.  

-- St. John the Baptist

The cathedral contains what is alleged to be the head of St. John the Baptist, a relic brought back from Constantinople.  You can find out what happened to one of his fingers by searching for the tag 65SJD88. The Great Mosque in Damascus also claims to hold the head of John the Baptist. There are bits of him all over the place!

-- The West Front

The west front of the cathedral, which is shown in the photograph, was built between 1220 and 1236.  It shows an unusual degree of artistic unity.  Its lower tier with 3 vast deep porches is capped with a gallery of larger than lifesize kings which stretches across the entire façade beneath the rose window.

-- The Rose Window

The immense rose window has a diameter of 43 feet (13m).

Above the rose window is an open arcade - the Galerie des Sonneurs.   A sonneur is a player of traditional music, primarily in Brittany, typically playing a clarinet or the Breton bagpipe.

-- John Buchan

In the 1919 book Mr. Standfast by John Buchan (1875-1940), the character Richard Hannay describes the cathedral as being:

"The noblest church that the 
hand of man ever built for God".

Taken on: February 16, 2024

Tags:

postcard

old

nostalgia

nostalgic

Amiens

St.

Jacques

Lévy

fils

Cie

Cathedral

west

front

rose

window

John

Buchan

1919

Richard

Hannay

Standfast

89ASD94 « less

Sets appears in: • Amiens (Somme) • France

Stats: 131 views

close tools panel

Badge creator

Use Flickriver Badge Creator to create a badge linking to your photos, your group or any other Flickriver view.

You can place your badge on your Flickr profile, Blog or Website.

Add to your iGoogle or Netvibes page

Flickriver widget for iGoogle or Netvibes can display almost any Flickriver view - most interesting today, by user, by group, by tag etc. Once added to your personalized homepage, just edit widget settings to select your desired view.

Clickr on one of the buttons below to install:

Embed on your Web site

To embed this view, Copy and Paste the following HTML code:

Black background (preview):

White background (preview):

Firefox and Chrome addons

Adds a 'Flickriver' button to your browser. While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on this button to open the same view on Flickriver.

Install in Firefox
Install in Chrome

Search plugin

Add 'Search on Flickriver' to your browser's search box. Works with Firefox and Internet Explorer. Install search plugin

"View on Flickriver" Greasemonkey script

A Greasemonkey script that adds Flickriver links to various Flickr photo pages - user photos, favorites, pools etc, allowing to quickly open the corresponding Flickriver view.

Also, allows quickly viewing any Flickr photo on black background in large size.

Install "View on Flickriver" script

Bookmarklet

While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on the bookmarklet to open the same view on Flickriver.

To install: drag and drop the following link to your Bookmarks toolbar.
IE users - add the link to your Favorites under the Links folder