Paris in Savannah | Cathedral Edition

It's no great secret that our hearts belong to Paris. Wandering through the city's cobblestoned streets, sifting through treasures at the brocantes—The Paris Market exists because the City of Lights did first. Across twenty years of business, friendships, travel, and expansion, our heart has remained true to this vision. 

It's just our luck that Savannah happens to hold the same sort of magic within its beating heart. 

We're embarking on a new series looking at the overlap between Savannah and Paris, from sprawling cathedrals to city markets, to the artists that dot street corners, sketching out architecture and tourists scattered beneath them. 

Our first stop: the cathedrals

Sweeping, majestic creations from another time, cathedrals are a hallmark of any major European city, so it's no wonder one was built at the heart of Savannah where French citizens crossed the ocean to find a home. The Cathedral Basilica of St. John the Baptist was built and rebuilt across the 19th century, after fires destroyed the first iteration.

Constructed in the style of a French gothic cathedral, the exterior belies a wildly colorful interior from star-painted ceilings to brightly-lit windows that inspired more than a few pieces of our Fallen Aristocrat jewelry line. 

Stone paths sprawl between crackling wooden pews, footsteps echoing from one antechamber to the next. It's not difficult to imagine the nuns and monks who once sang behind curtains and bided their time creating reliquaries with bare fingers and scraps of noble cloth.

Or the thousands who knelt across the years before elaborately-carved crosses to pay homage to their beliefs. Every detail has meaning, from the number of cherubim to which hand holds the keys, to what animals are present and how many swirls are cut into a design. 

"A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral."

 

- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (author of Le Petit Prince)

 

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