West facade of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Reims, Reims, France, 2021

A prominent example of High Gothic architecture, Reims Cathedral was built to replace an earlier church destroyed by fire in 1210. Although little damaged during the French Revolution, the present cathedral saw extensive restoration in the 19th century. However, it was severely damaged during World War I and the church was again restored in the 20th century.
Since the 1905 law on the separation of church and state, the cathedral has been owned by the French state, while the Catholic church has an agreement for its exclusive use. The French state pays for its restoration and upkeep.

The West facade, the entry to the cathedral, particularly glorifies royalty. Most of it was completed at the same time, giving it an unusual unity of style. It is harmonic and balanced, with two towers of equal height and three portals entering into the nave. The porches of the portals, with archivolts containing many sculptures, protrude from the main wall. The two bell towers were originally planned to have stone spires rising 120 m (390 ft) up in the air and making them three times taller than the nave, but they were never finished. Currently the towers measure 81 m (266 ft) in hight. Since 1027 all but seven of France's future kings were crowned at Reims Cathedral.

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My dear wife Loes walking underneath a railroad bridge, Passage du Sablon, Metz, France, 2019.

Railroad bridges are usually made of either stone, concrete, steel or timber. Nearly all of the North American, South American and Asian railroad bridges were built of either steel or timber. In Europe, Russia and parts of China, timber was almost never used but concrete and stone were quite prevalent. The simple arch bridge not only is the most beautiful and spectacular of all railroad bridge types but it is also the most perfect form for handling the heavy load of a train since the materials in the bridge are always in compression. Arches are shaped into some form of either a semicircle or a segmental. If the arch is made of steel, hinges are often located at the two springing points to relieve temperature related expansion and contraction stresses.

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Stairs leading from the terrace into the gardens, also known as a Grand Parterre, at the Château of Chantilly, France, 2016.

The Château of Chantilly and its gardens hold a special place in my heart. It is where I got down on my knees back in the summer of 1997, presented my then girlfriend with a ring and proposed. She accepted and we got married the two years later. And we still are.
The Château of Chantilly is comprised out of several buildings, each of which is a testament of its time. Yet, the total doesn’t look like a collection of individual buildings but rather presents itself as a ‘whole’. The entire building is a continuity of shape and form whilst at the same time it willingly expresses its collage nature, thus stating, however subtle, a distinction between old and new, between tragic past and majestic present, between that what ones was and things yet to come. The château embodies the passing of time in the most elegant way possible. Over the centuries constructing, destroying, reconstructing and remoddeling all seem to have constituted a building that couldn’t have been build in any otter way. In these turbulent and confusing times that to me somehow is a very comforting and hopeful thought.

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