10 largest cities in France
Paris
Marseilles
Lyon
Toulouse
Nice
Nantes
Strasbourg
Orleans
Reims
Avignon
Metz, a city in the North-East of France (Lorraine), is 3,000
years old. It therefore has a very extensive architectural
eclecticism joining Antiquity to the twentieth century. Its history
is closely linked to its border location, which gives it a face that
is both French and German, particularly with its “Imperial Quarter”.
An exceptional heritage which has earned the city center its
inclusion on the French indicative list of Unesco heritage in 2014.
Its popular image as a gray and industrial garrison town is
gradually disappearing, because it contradicts the reality of a very
commercial and friendly, natural and cultural city, whose colors and
richness bear witness to a filled history that has given it a
dimension. picturesque.
The name of the city is pronounced
like "mass", the pronunciation of "t" is very little appreciated by
Metz, as for the city of Brussels which is pronounced as
"brusselle". The city presents an important architectural diversity,
from antiquity to the twentieth century, rich in a strong medieval
and classical heritage, of French influence, but also Germanic,
especially in the imperial district, built during the annexation of
the Alsace-Lorraine, representative of Wilhelmian architecture. Metz
seeks to establish itself as a platform for modern and contemporary
art through new urban cultural policies.
Metz Cathedral
The Saint-Etienne cathedral of Metz is the
Catholic cathedral of the diocese of Metz, in the French department
of Moselle in the Grand Est region. If its construction spanned
three centuries, from 1220, the cathedral presents a beautiful
homogeneity of style since the stylistic criteria were respected in
each construction campaign.
Metz Cathedral is not only the
cathedral in France with the largest glazed area, nearly 6500 m2,
but also the one with the largest Gothic windows in Europe. As for
the height of its vaults, it is only surpassed in France by the
cathedrals of Beauvais and Amiens.
In the Bulletin of the
Society of Archeology and History of the Moselle of 1862, it is
recalled that the Archbishop of Bordeaux, Mgr Donnet paid homage to
the cathedral of Metz. In addition, the knight Joseph Bard paid
homage to the quality of the cathedral and its stained glass
adornment in the article he wrote in the Archaeological Congress of
France in 1846. He spiritually called it the lantern of the Good
Lord .
The cathedral has been classified as a historical
monument since February 16, 1930. One of the ten most visited
cathedrals in France, it is a candidate for a UNESCO classification.