Bleu, Blonde, Rouge

11/09/2026

We can trace the birth of Notre Dame de Paris to one man: Maurice de Sully. As soon as he was named Archbishop of Paris, his dream of a grand new cathedral took shape. Born in 1120 in the Loire, he would attend the University of Paris in 1140 with fellow classmate and future king Louis VII. His ascent in the Catholic Church was swift, from sub-deacon in 1147 to Archbishop of Paris in 1160, while also teaching theology at the University of Paris.

Sully knew years earlier that he wanted to build a cathedral on the Île de la Cité, where the Cathedral Saint Étienne and the Église Sainte Marie stood. He reached out to his old friend, now King Louis VII, who supported the project. Sully himself provided most of the money to build Notre-Dame. At the time in Paris, the Bishops owned two-thirds of the land surrounding a 50 mile radius of the cathedral. In that first year, between 1160 and 1161, the chevet, the easternmost side of the cathedral, was completed.

Many history books date the start of Notre Dame to 1163 with the laying of the stone by Pope Alexander III; however, that version wasn’t written until the 14th century.

Sully’s money and passion created the Cathedral we all hold so close to our hearts. For 36 years, he served as Archbishop and chief project manager. During his time, they also completed the Episcopal palace (1168-1178), the choir (1177), and opened the area in front of the church by adding a new street.

The nearby Hôtel Dieu was falling into disrepair, and he had it partially demolished and rebuilt, and also personally negotiated and bought the homes that once covered the Parvis. One family fought back, and it took Sully over 30 years to negotiate a price they would agree on. With the parvis, he wanted it to serve as a link between the profane and sacred worlds and to open the view of the grand facade, drawing people in. On September 11, 1196, Sully died, and in his will, he left 1,000 livres to finish the roof and coat it with lead.

Merci, Maurice de Sully, for your gift; we still celebrate your passing 830 years later.

07/09/2026

06/09/2026

This morning, on a perfect sunny Sunday morning with just the smallest bit of crisp in the air I headed out to visit a place I first saw ten years ago today. After the Eiffel Tower, the Cathedral Notre Dame de Paris is the most recognized monument in Paris. Much of that is due to Victor Hugo or Disney, and of course the 2019 fire really propelled it into the mainstream.

If there is one place that holds a special place in my family, it would be Notre Dame. My grandparents loved visiting on each trip and took many photos, but my great-aunts Rachel and Laura also loved it when they visited in 1903. They even bought a small stone gargoyle that I still have.

Today, as I sat through morning Mass, I watched the morning light stream through the windows and thought about all my ancestors who came through the door and looked up at the same stained glass. As the people filed in through the north transept, they stopped and looked up in amazement at the south rose window. Maybe one of them came to visit because their own mother or father also fell in love with the stone and glass.

That is what is truly special about the many gorgeous historic monuments. It’s not just another place to check off your list. It means so much more than that, it is the monumental moments that can tie us all together through the ages.

And hopefully, another hundred years from now, people will still walk through and look up with the same awe at the stunning stained glass.

I’ve been spending a lot of time digging through the photos I took on the first trip 10 years ago this week, and the before-the-fire vs. after photos are striking.

Keep in mind a 2016 camera compared to a 2026 iPhone, and a change in the lighting scheme, also make a big difference.

01/09/2026

In 1939, as Hi**er came knocking on the door of France, the keepers of the great art of Paris sprang into action. While Hi**er’s art-loving henchmen headed to Paris with a shopping list of must-have pieces of art, the treasures of the Musée du Louvre were at the top.
Jacques Jaujard, the director of France’s National Museum, and René Huyghe, curator of paintings, devised a plan to save the art of the Louvre. On August 25, the Louvre was closed for cleaning for three days. However, what really happened behind the historic walls of the Louvre would alter the dictator’s plans.
On those three days, the staff of the Louvre, students, and employees from the Samaritaine worked around the clock, removing paintings from their frames, rolling and packing. Beginning on the 28th and the days that followed, more than twelve hundred crates left the Louvre headed to the Loire Valley.
One special crate would travel on its own. The most famous painting of the Louvre, the Mona Lisa, would be packed separately in a box lined with English paper and wrapped in red silk. Marked with only the initials MN noted on the outside, she was strapped to a stretcher of an ambulance and hermetically sealed.
When she arrived in Chambord, National Museum officer Pierre Schommer passed out due to a lack of air but was thankfully revived. She moved on to the Château de Louvigny along with curator Andre Chamsen and kept moving every few months. Always trying to outrun the German forces as they came closer and closer.
Following the German surrender on May 8, 1945, the artwork began their return to the Louvre.
On June 16, 1945, the Mona Lisa was hanging back on the walls of the Musée du Louvre, and on October 6, 1947, the museum was reopened to the public. Without the quick thinking and work of Jacques Jauhard and René Huyghe and the countless people who gave their time, most of the Louvre would have been lost.
Listen to the whole story and the other times the art left the Louvre in this week’s Paris in Bleu Blonde Rouge podcast, out now.

31/08/2026

On August 25, 1939, Hi**er came knocking on the door of France, and the keepers of the great art of Paris sprang into action. Jacques Jaujard, director of France’s National Museum, and René Huyghé saved the art of the Louvre and planned it for over a year. This is the evacuation that many have heard about, but it wasn’t the first.
During the Three Glorious Days in July 1830, Vicomte de Cailleux, a 93-year-old security guard, began removing the paintings from the walls of the Grande Galerie, which hung floor to ceiling.
In 1870, the Louvre came the closest to disaster. On July 18, Napoleon III declared war on Prussia. On August 30, 1870, they worked quickly for 4 days to pack the most precious pieces and send them to a military fortification in Brest. On September 1, the Mona Lisa and Wedding Feast at Cana left the Louvre. Over the next two weeks, 123 crates of paintings, sculptures, the Crown Jewels, and objets d’art would join them.

The next challenge would come in 1914. On August 1, a few weeks after World War I began, the Louvre moved items again. In the afternoon of August 24, the Germans began to advance, and by noon the next day, the curators were told to bring down the art quickly. During those days, the art was attached to hooks for a quick exit. Three days later, they were told to pick up the pace. They removed large paintings like David’s Sacre de Napoleon from their frames and rolled them onto large cylinders. Along with Venus, many of the treasures were loaded onto a train in the dark of night and sent to Toulouse, where they were hidden in the Jacobins church. The largest painting in the Louvre, Vernonese’s Wedding Feast at Cana, remained hidden behind a faux wall.
Wooden crates became scarce, and worried curators packed the paintings directly onto the back of trucks and covered them with a tarp. They removed 720 paintings, along with a handful of objets d’art and sculptures. At the end of November 1918, five weeks after the war, the art slowly returned to Paris, and by mid-February 1919, the Louvre was back to normal, although only for the next twenty years.

Listen to the story tomorrow on a new episode of Paris in Bleu Blonde Rouge