Thread by @USAS_WW1

#Metz #France #travel - #NotreDame cathedral reveals itself at the end of a narrow street… It is beautiful Gothic architecture, with a mid-height central tower and two taller flanking transept towers much further at back. It’s all lit up at night. 1/

2/ #travel #France - #NotreDame of Paris caught on fire a few years ago. Here is another heartbreaking Notre Dame fire... but this is Metz in 1877... The other images show three other stages of evolution - two earlier and one now. #architecture

3/ Metz is a remarkably beguiling town that enchants absolutely effortlessly. There is a large pedestrian-only expanse in the compact historical district that makes walking around a wonderful, pollution free, safe pleasure. Note Marshall Ney's statue↖️!

4/ Metz is 3.5 hours east of Paris by car. The Romanesque Temple Neuf (New Temple) protestant church built by the Germans looks ancient but dates to 1901. The city's backbone is the Moselle River, graced with beautiful lights and charming flower baskets.

5/ Metz's medieval #map: Note citadel island at left, Porte des Allemends at ↘️ and the hardly occupied central islands. Outer ramparts are complimented by fortified bridges and the remnants of an inner rampart and canal next to tanneries. #Cities #Maps

6/ #Orientation Metz's modern map. Top faces West: Citadel at left no longer an island. Porte des Allemends still there. Central islands built up. Outer ramparts and fortified bridges mostly gone, replaced by roads and greenbelts especially at bottom left.

7/ Metz's modern map detail. The #citadel is no longer an island. The large esplanade and paved park and other greenery sit largely on where the moat used to be. The #ramparts are almost all gone. The Moselle River is at the top.

8/ Rue de la Citadelle is home to Hotel la Citadelle Metz, by #Sofitel, a modernized retelling of the former barracks building that's 500 years old. Free parking and then an easy walk into town. Superb, vast, rooms with foyers, super king beds, bathrobes, ultra-long bathtub, etc.

@MairiedeMetz @LorraineTourism 9/ Metz's Jardin des Tanneurs (tanner's garden) reminds us that tanneries were formerly on canals/rivers. The curved line from center to left and then down is where the canal/tributary of La Seille River once ran, which we see in the medieval map above.

@MairiedeMetz @LorraineTourism 10/ Metz's island west of the cathedral had almost nothing on the medieval map. But now it's built up with the 1901 New Temple, new bridges, etc. The ramparts and fortified #bridges are mostly gone, sadly. But Pont St. George (at right) dates from 1281 AD.