St. Paul's Cathedral

...it was december, 1973…London is and always has been my favorite walking city. anyway, I spent New Years in London, and at the stroke of midnight I jumped into the fountain at Trafalgar Square…and was promptly pulled out by a Bobby who fined me…but not before draping a blanket over me.

If you don’t want to climb the stairs and you don’t want to pay 9 pounds to get in, you can attend Evensong FOR FREE. Evensong is held every day at 5pm and you get to hear the choir singing in the magnificent cathedral.

The stairs up to the very top are very small and rickety. I was really scared going up them. Be wary of this when you visit. I’m not usually afraid of heights, but the top of the cathedral was a scary experience.

Beautiful place!
I climbed and climbed up to the Whispering part, sat down to rest. My friends and I are having a good time, whispering to see how it works. We were yelled at by the lady “attending” the Whisper Room. She said it was called the Whisper Room, not the Whistle Room.. haha. I was whistling because someone else was. A little grouchy I say, but yes maybe I shouldnt have done it. We did get a little immature and whisper funny things. Sorry Lady!! :)

I walked to the top. It’s worth it!

This is what I learned while visiting St. Paul’s Cathedral:

—There has been a St. Paul’s Cathedral on the same site in operation for nearly 1,000 years. The one immediately preceding the building of Sir Christopher Wren’s design was a Norman version, which was gutted by the great fire of 1666.

—Wren designed St. Paul’s to be the first domed building in London and the design was first rejected because it had no spire and was therefore “foreign, popish, and unEnglish”. (Or something like that.)

—That the British were very grateful to the USA after World War II, particularly to the US soldiers who fought defending England. They dedicated a very large and prominent part of Saint Paul’s Cathedral to a monument honoring those dead. It is known to this day as the American chapel. Visiting the American chapel will practically break your heart.

—St. Paul’s Cathedral is not really grey, but off-white. It has only turned grey over about the past 300 years because of the coal burning and the pollution in the City of London.

—One man, in honor of his father and grandfather, donated £10.9 million to restore the Portland stone of the interior St. Paul’s Cathedral to its original color. This job took from 2001 to 2004. While £10.9 million is an impressive number, especially as a donation from one man, it is even more impressive for those of us from the USA when we consider that £10.9 million is equal to $19.62 million US by the most recent rate of conversion. They are in the process of cleaning the exterior at the moment.

—In one night during World War II, the dome and roof of St. Paul’s Cathedral took 28 direct hits of incendiary bombs that left in ruins all of London immediately surrounding the cathedral. Except for one explosion (not the same night) that took out quite an ugly Victorian altar and every single ugly stained glass window with which the Victorians had replaced those designed by Sir Christopher Wren, the church building endured the whole of the war relatively intact. At one point, the Londoners said the church looked as if it was sailing in a sea of fire. The reason the building endured the war in such great shape was due in no small part to a team of men and women who, instead of evacuating to the safety of the underground tunnels during the blitzes of Hitler’s air raids, chose to spend those nights patrolling the roof of the building in order the extinguish any flames. These men and women are honored by a special marker in the cathedral as well.

—Despite the popularity of “Mary Poppins”, it is well nigh impossible to find a snow globe with St. Paul’s Cathedral inside it.

—If you have enough money, enough chutzpah, enough fame, and some railroad ties, rope, rocks, and a cordless drill, you can install quite a huge and ugly “sculpture” right inside St. Paul’s Cathedral the way Yoko Ohno did recently, provided you put up a plaque explaining that this nylon-rope-and-railroad-tie monstrosity symbolizes something esoteric and deeply moving such as “The Light Flooding the Inner Consciousness of the Humanity of the Man’s Inner Soul” or something like that. Fortunately by all indications, this is not a permanent display and hopefully, they will recycle the rope, railroad ties, and rocks to a more useful existence than cluttering up the west side of the cathedral.

St. Paul’s was one of my favorite places in London.

There’s a terrific view and not so many people make it all the way up.

Go all the way up to the top. It’s worth climbing the hundreds of stairs.

St. Paul’s Cathedral is beautiful. It’s massive. It’s beautiful and massive. Then there’s the staircase leading to the Whispering Gallery, Stone Gallery, and Golden Gallery. This part of St. Paul’s interprets beauty and mass in different ways.

It’s an honest display of utility through the centuries. Cold stone walls combined with stuctural 2×4 construction house gritty iron staircases lit by 20th century flourescent lights. All serve their function. That is to elevate travelers high above London.

Sure you can let a plastic pod at London Eye whisk you high above London without a single step required on your part. However, what the journey up St. Paul’s dome does is entitle the participant to experience just how far they are traveling by forcing them to circle round and round a twirling iron staircase (even better when it’s raining and the steps are wet like the day we were there), and climb up winding stone steps with mysterious doors along the way.

Most doors are locked. Almost all doors are closed. Rarely will you see an open door. I did. I thought it was the door to the Whispering Gallery. My wife and I were the first ones to walk up to the Whispering Gallery that day. (I was about 30 steps ahead of her). When I walked through the doorway, I saw an organ keyboard command central thing. Cool. And I walked a little further and saw some sort of board room setting complete with a simple and long table surrounded by old, rickety chairs. It was spellbinding. Do I belong here? I quickly turned around and returned to the staircase.

This photograph was taken from the veranda at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Dig that space between the light fixture and St. Paul’s dome.

You can buy a copy of this photo (and more St. Paul’s photos):
http://unlikelymoose.com/art/photograph/london/st_pauls_cathedral/01_6902.html

When I visited this great center of the world, I was more impressed by Christopher Wren’s architecture than the profound place it holds in English history. I was far too irreverent. My humble apologies…