Day 4- Notre Dame at Night

 

Day 4- Notre Dame at Night- 

My crush du jour was a toss up between a subway orchestra, anything in the Latin Quarter, a light show at the Eiffel Tower, an anti-capitalist protest or the Notre Dome. I think it was the flying buttresses that did me in...

A flying buttress is a specific form of buttressing most strongly associated with gothic church architecture. It serves to transmit the lateral forces pushing a wall outwards (which may arise from stone vaulted ceilings or from wind-loading on roofs) across an intervening space and ultimately down to the ground. Flying buttress systems have two key components - a massive vertical masonry block (the buttress) on the outside of the building and a segmental or quadrant arch bridging the gap between that buttress and the wall (the 'flyer').^[1]