One Day in Paris - Joan d'Arc and Napoleon

The rue des Pyramides is home to the formidable golden statue of Joan of Arc and had me transfixed. I remember watching a film (Joan of Arc (1948)) years ago with Ingrid Bergman as the young woman who transformed the Hundred Years War and being in awe of what she believed in.

But it was to the church St Roch that we were headed where Napoleon had used artillery to disperse a crowd. It is recorded that this ‘whiff of grapeshot’ was the start of his meteoric career. Just as then, it had homeless seeking shelter from a building that had seen so much.

Here, inside the church, I saw something new; sculptures whose juxtaposition told the story of Jesus where the baby was looking at His future whilst the man looked down from the cross on His birth and loving parents.

It was lunchtime.