Monday, Apr. 02, 1945
France's 25
Before D-day the French Government in London listed 25 buildings and monuments as the most important in the cultural heritage of France. Last week in Paris, SHAEF's G-5 monuments section gave a final report on how these 25 masterworks had fared in the war. The bad news: 750-year-old Rouen Cathedral, one of Europe's most ornately beautiful churches, had been "badly damaged . . . but far less than Reims in the last war." Thanks to the care taken by Allied forces --and perhaps to the carelessness or haste of the usually thorough Nazis--all the rest of G-5's report was good news:
P: Notre Dame and the Louvre, top favorites of U.S. tourists, only scarred by rifle fire during the battle for Paris' liberation.
P: Strasbourg Cathedral, outstanding 700-year-old example of Gothic architecture, bombed twice, but damage "insignificant."
P: Reims Cathedral, one of the hardest hit of World War I and rebuilt with the help of the Rockefellers in the 1920s and '30s, undamaged.
P: Mont-Saint-Michel, rock-ribbed island abbey founded in the 8th Century, intact.
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