Please read and enjoy our article and watch your FREE LONDON MUSIC VIDEO at the end By the time the raging inferno known as The Great Fire of London was finally extinguished in 1666, more than 13,000 homes housing 70,000 people had gone.
87 churches, including St. Paul's Cathedral as well as most of the buildings of the City of London authorities were raised to the ground.
For one young architect, Christopher Wren , the calamity presented a wonderful opportunity. Within days of the fire, Wren presented a visionary plan to King Charles II for turning the narrow, ramshackle streets of London into a modern city of wide avenues and open plazas. | | Although the King liked Wren's ideas, there were little funds to carry them out. Worse, the impatient Londoners had already begun to rebuild along the old street patterns.
As a consolation, the King commissioned Wren to rebuild the city's churches , including St Paul's Cathedral. After two designs were rejected by the clergy for being 'too modern' and/or 'too Italian', in 1675 Wren finally gave the clergy what they wanted; St Paul's Cathedral had a traditional English church design with a long nave and a spire.
The King approved Wren's design for St Paul's Cathedral with the interesting condition that the architect was free to make "variations, rather ornamental than essential" . Craftily, therefore, and seemingly with the tacit consent of the King, Wren proceeded to quietly change virtually the entire design of St Paul's.
With much of the building work hidden behind scaffolding and protected from prying eyes, the clergy realised a little too late what had happened. St Paul's Cathedral was too far advanced to be altered. Gone was the spire, replaced by the dome and the height of the aisle walls had been raised . |
|  | | The Millennium Bridge and St Paul's Cathedral | One can only imagine the fury of the clergy when they came to understand that they had fallen foul of the determination and self-belief of that devious, but brilliant, young architect! In the building of the new St Paul's Cathedral, stones from the old St Paul's were used. One of the stones was marked with a Latin inscription, ironically stating 'resurgam', (I shall rise again) . Wren had the word inscribed on the pediment of the south door, beneath a carved phoenix .
St Paul's Cathedral, largely built of Portland stone was built in 33 years between 1675 and 1708 , the result of Wren's creative vision. The dome of St Paul's Cathedral is the second largest in the world . Inside the dome is the Whispering Gallery , so named because a whisper breathed against one wall is audible against the far wall 112 feet away.
The interior of St Paul's Cathedral is a glorious combination of ornately curved and brilliantly coloured decorations in a symmetry that is almost overwhelming.
St. Paul's Cathedral is a masterpiece .
Indeed, Christopher Wren is fittingly remembered inside his cathedral, his legacy.
A simple Latin inscription on his tomb in St Paul's Crypt translates as:
"Reader, if you seek his memorial, look about you". |
|
