St Pauls

Rather than sit through an office lunch at the screen reading and eating crap I have decided to roam my local world for an hour when work allows.

Today I ended up at St Pauls. I've lived in London most of my forty odd years but had never been inside. Breathtaking.

Whilst in poorer times I have objected to paying to get into Churches I handed over the cash and started roaming, I only had one objective, to climb the dome. After two laps I found the stairs, a lazy slack spiral at first ascending in pidgeon paces up a long climb to the internal gallery (the Whispering Gallery) that wraps the inside of the base of the dome. The scene inside is fascinating and to watch a service from here amazing, the mosaics on the floor and the brightly frescoed walls and dome above reflect Wren's desire to bridge the gap between heaven and earth. An artifice achieved.

Alone it is difficult to whisper to oneself across the great chasm but the italians mumbling faberanza got the message across adequately.

A little door on the far side has an arrow pointing up and through a narrow set of stone steps, past ancient oak doors and iron framed oriel windows leads another stair, a tighter stone circle, up to the external "Stone Gallery". From here you step outside, breathe heavilly and look to the horizon. Fabulous views open up and the scale of the cathedral starts to take over your head. It is vast. You look down on churches, offices and Paternoster Square, full of insects going about London life without looking up, never quite appreciating what looms above.

A lap of this deck enables you to gather the strength and breath for the last stage up to the Golden Gallery. This is a more daunting climb, gone are the stone steps replaced by a lattice of iron spirals in sets of 20 steps between landings, rising through the inside of the dome shell between the outer surface and inner trappings. The ironwork is old and rests on beams upon beams with rather worrying later concrete interventions moulded around the stairs. Again you pass tiny oak doors and lattices of footways and passages, here more precarious and less enclosed than at the lower levels, you pass vestiges of original stone and timber stairs long ago abandonned and leading in alternate directions. My heart was pumping hard, either from the climb or the vertigo. Finally you arive at the last flight a narrow place of stone steps, lowering ceilings and steep ascent, you enter a chamber with the obligatory tourist guards, and make a final stumble, back on stone, up onto this gallery that runs around the outside of the top of the dome, before the stone ball and lantern rise up above.

If you thought the previous views were good here you can almost see the Sea to the east as you overlook the Port of London, the Thames runs shimmering in a loop to the south beyond to the downs and to the north the Weald Ridge, Wembley and Harrow. London seems but small and its edges within touching distance. This view is amazing. In medieval London this must truly have felt like rising up to god, with no buildings over a few stories back then, the feeling must have been one of fear and awe. This remains. The power and grandeur embodied in this monument will stand in comparison to any contemporary buildings in history as a testament to the power of religeon and the unutterable stupidity of man. The ability of Man to create this and then dedicate it to a deity shows how low our self esteem must be, when simply to build this edifice should demonstrate that man alone has the power of creation.

I loved it. Where to tomorrow?