Notre Dame de Lausanne Cathedral - Lausanne, Switzerland
Posted by: 
manchanegra
N 46° 31.356 E 006° 38.086
32T E 318589 N 5154832
The most beautiful Gothic church in Switzerland, Lausanne Cathedral (Cathédrale Notre-Dame) stands 500 ft. above Lake Geneva in the chic hillside city of Lausanne.
Waymark Code: WMC12P
Location: Vaud, Switzerland
Date Posted: 07/12/2011
Views: 27
Construction on the cathedral began in 1175 and it was consecrated in 1275 by Pope Gregory X. It was completed in, well, never - it still remains unfinished today.
Throughout the Middle Ages, pilgrims flocked to the cathedral to pray before the Golden Virgin, a miraculous statue of the Virgin Mary (to whom the cathedral is dedicated).
Lausanne was one of many medieval cities to institute a nightwatch to prevent the all-too-common threat of devastating fires. Although it is mostly stone stone, the city was once made mostly of wood and burned down several times. Every night, watchmen stationed on the wall surrounding the town would call out to each other, ensuring that there were no fires and that no enemy was approaching.
The cathedral nightwatch was the most important. Every night, the watchman walks up the 153 stairs to the top of the tower. Every hour on the hour from 10pm to 2am, he calls out to the four directions: C'est le guet; il a sonné l'heure ("This is the nightwatch; the hour has struck"). Lausanne is the only city in Europe to continue this tradition to this day. Nowadays, the reassuring sound of the nightwatchman's voice startles lovers on park benches and drunken students stumbling home.
In 1536, the combined forces of the Reformation and Bernese army stripped Lausanne Cathedral of virtually all its decoration, including altars, statues and paintings. The beloved Golden Virgin was melted down to make coins. Its treasury, a unique collection of liturgical vestments and tapestries, was taken over to Bern, where it is now preserved in a museum.
The architect-restorer Eugène Viollet-le-Duc began a restoration of the cathedral in the 19th century - and it is still going on today.
From:sacred-destinations.com
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