© la Goélette
This exhibition guide contains a large amount of information: thanks to the QR codes it features, you may access digital contents in various forms (texts, plans, photos and videos).
This exhibition guide contains a large amount of information: thanks to the QR codes it features, you may access digital contents in various forms (texts, plans, photos and videos).
In 2011, the diocese and city of Reims celebrated the 800th anniversary of Notre-Dame de Reims Cathedral. The first stone of this masterpiece of Gothic heritage was indeed laid on 6 May, 1211. However, its history had actually begun 800 years before that, with the first church built on this site by the bishop Saint Nicasius of Reims around the year 400. One century later, this is where Saint Remigius, by baptising Clovis I, laid the foundations of the Christian kingdom of the Franks. In memory of this founding act, French kings came to Reims to be anointed upon coronation.
This symbolic national dimension accounts for the tragic fate of the cathedral during the First World War; burnt down, destroyed, it only fully became a place of worship again after twenty years of renovation work. This work was continued and the last signs of damage will soon be gone. Fifty years after the Franco-German reconciliation, which was sealed here by Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer on 8 July, 1962, Notre-Dame de Reims, guarded by a troop of angels, is a place for peace and hope.
Let yourself be guided
