The Last Visit To Our List Of The Big Three In London

My list of The Big Three in London is, in order, The Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, and St. Paul's Cathedral.

You may have a different list, but then you'd be wrong, wouldn't you, so you might as well go with my Big Three.  (Actually, if you have one, two, or three different places in London you would put on the list -- email me with your list, I'm curious and like to hear what other folks think.)

To me, thanks to one famous photo during the Blitz, there is a mystique about St. Paul.

St. Paul's Survives: Herbert Mason's

masterful photo, taken December 29,

1940 at the height of the Nazi

bombing Blitz of London.

A group of volunteers, mostly architects, served as the St. Paul's Watch, and on the night of December 29, around 6pm, the Luftwaffe began dropping incendiary bombs on the one square mile that is the City of London.  An astounding 28 bombs hit St. Paul's that night, but thanks to the Watch, the fires were put out incredibly quickly, including by men crawling along the smoldering beams as bombs lodges in the roof timbers to douse the flames.

There is a plaque on the floor just inside the front door that honors and the men and women of St. Paul's Watch and the job they did saving the church from WWII destruction.

Mason's photo was taken from the rooftop of the Daily Mail offices near Fleet Street, and has been called the greatest British photo of the war.  It's absolutely stunning.  The smoke and flames blocked his view, but suddenly a wind provided the opening for Mason's masterpiece.

Anyhow, that's what I'm reminded of every time I see the iconic dome: the iconic photo.  It is to Britons what the flag raising on Iwo Jima is to Americans, a stirring sign of resilience pointing out the road to victory.

This photo shows the

bombed out buildings

surrounding St. 

Paul's Cathedral,

underscoring the

dramatic saving

of the church.

That photo isn't the only reason to go to St. Paul's, but it is enough of a reason by itself.

But wait, there's more.  The first St. Paul's Cathedral was built on Ludgate Hill in 604.  Three burned down and were rebuilt.  Then the fourth one burned down in the Great Fire of 1666.  Sir Christopher Wren had a plan for a new building on Ludgate Hill within a week of the fire, and then he also planned 50 new churches as London was rising from the ashes.  (Ludgate Hill is the highest point in the City of London).

Someday I'm going to as many Wren churches as I can, but this trip was not that day.  Wren was a 31 year old astronomy professor who had never built a major building in his life (I built a shed once, but stopped there) when he won the commission to build St. Paul's.

The style is considered English Baroque, which, from looking outside and in, means Baroque in a very tame English-style, as there appear to be very few Baroque flourishes.  Stiff upper lip and all that.

St. Paul's is England's national church, and where both national weddings (then- Prince Charles and Lady Diana) and state funerals of the greats (Prime Ministers Churchill and Thatcher -- the first saved England from the Nazis, and the second saved England from socialism).

It is chock full of memorials to war heroes and wars.  

And surprisingly, we found a war hero who two docents at the church, both working within ten to twenty yards of the hero's bust, said it was a myth that OUR hero was honored in the church.  Yet Carol found him.

Yup, a bust of George Washington,

which shows that Brits actually

can let bygones be bygones.

The church is massive.  It's the fourth largest in Europe, behind St. Peter's in Rome, Sevilla, and Milan.  The dome is 365 feet high, and the church is 515 feet long and 250 feet wide.  

Because it is not a Catholic Church, but rather Church of England (take the religion out of religion, be one of the five people who still attend services).  

Sights to see in the Cathedral include the massive Wellington Monument (it won't be in the photo post because it's too big to get a worthwhile photo of), the inside of the Dome, with the beautiful paintings of scenes from St. Paul's life, 

The carved wooden choir, including the chair for the Anglican bishop, is quite beautiful.  There is a carved bishop's hat hanging above his chair.  Above the choir (and altar) are beautiful glass mosaics representing God and his creation.  

Those mosaics were not part of Wren's plan, but were added in the Victorian age after Queen Victoria (her parents realized "the Victorian age" was coming, so to get ahead of it they named her after the coming age) complained that the ceiling was "dreary and undevotional."

(Editor: That's not how history works.  Writer: Thanks a lot -- at least one reader nodded at the above paragraph and said, "well, I learned something new."  Editor: Making stuff up is NOT "learning something new.")

The canopy for the high altar is stunning, and it was redone in 1958 after being badly damaged in the 1940 blitz.

Back outside of the altar is one of the dreckier modern art sculptures Carol and I have ever seen.  It was done by Henry Moore, noted as "Britain's greatest modern sculptor by a panel of WNBA referees, all wearing extremely dark glasses and using a white cane as a mobility aid.  If you've seen his "Mother and Child" sculpture he created in 1983 and disagree, ah, you won't change my mind.

All the way in the back is the American Memorial Chapel, dedicated "To the American Dead of the Second World War, From the People of Britain."  It's very moving, and there is a 500 page book called the Roll of Honor under glass with the names of the 28,000 U.S. servicemen and women who were based in Britain and lost their lives during the war.

The stained glass windows in the American Chapel have religious scenes, but there are also small glass nods to America.  We found a bald eagle, George Washington, and the seals of all 50 states.  In carved wood, there's a rocket ship, birds and foliage native to the US.

There are monuments to Horatio Nelson (British savior at Trafalgar) and Charles Cornwallis (British loser at Yorktown).  Cornwallis was forgiven for losing the greatest colonies on earth because he later served as governor general of India.

Alas, we did not climb the 528 step Dome (I've done it before, so I have that going for me) as two of our party were injured.

The crypt is of interest, and for more than just the bust of George Washington (although that's noteworthy in and of itself).  Tombs of Admiral Nelson, Christopher Wren, and the Duke of Wellington are the most noteworthy.  (The French don't like to see him, they still have a Beef with Wellington!).  Florence Nightingale is also memorialized there.