France Guide
Alsace and Lorraine
The cathedral
Opening time: Daily 7–11.30am & 12.40–7pm; closed during services
Price: Free
The Cathédrale de Notre-Dame soars out of the close huddle of medieval houses at its feet with a single spire of such delicate, flaky lightness that it seems the work of confectioners rather than masons. It's worth slogging up the 332 steps to the spire's viewing platform (daily, April– Sept 9am–7.15pm; Oct– March 10am–5.15pm; June & July open until 9.45pm on Fri and Sat; €4.60) for the superb view of the old town, and, in the distance, the Vosges to the west and the Black Forest to the east.
The interior, too, is magnificent, the high nave a model of proportion enhanced by a glorious sequence of stained-glass windows. The finest are in the south aisle next to the door, depicting the life of Christ and the Creation, but the modern glass in the apse designed in 1956 by Max Ingrand to commemorate the city's first European institutions is also beautiful. On the left of the nave, the cathedral's organ perches precariously above one of the arches, while further down on the same side is the late fifteenth-century pulpit, a masterpiece of intricacy in stone by the aptly named Hans Hammer.
In the south transept are the cathedral's two most popular sights. The Pilier des Anges is a slender triple-tiered central column, decorated with some of the most graceful and expressive statuary of the thirteenth century. The huge and enormously complicated astrological clock (tickets can be bought from the postcard stand 9am–11am, then at the cash desk at the south door 11.35am– noon; €2) was built by Schwilgué of Strasbourg in 1842. It is a favourite with the tour-group operators, whose customers roll up in droves at midday to witness the clock's crowning performance of the day, striking the hour of noon, which it does with unerring accuracy at 12.30pm – that being 12 o'clock "Strasbourg time".
Narrow rue Mercière, busy with cathedral-gazers, funnels west to place Gutenberg, with its steep-pitched roofs and brightly painted facades. It was named after the printer and pioneer of moveable type who lived in the city in the early fifteenth century and whose statue occupies the middle of the square. On the west side stands the sixteenth-century Hôtel de Commerce.