St. Paul's Cathedral

These are photos of St. Paul's Cathedral which is in the middle of London and dates from the 17th century. There is an interesting story about the efforts to save this cathedral from bombing during WWII. There was a 24-hour a day volunteer watch of the church during the war. A few incendiary bombs did fall into the church but were able to be immediately extinguished or removed and detonated elsewhere. The volunteer efforts paid off as the church survived the war. Evidently there are photos showing all the destroyed buildings around the cathedral, but the cathedral itself remained. We saw an area on a nearby building that had crater marks from bombs exploding during WWII. The building owners decided to leave the marks as a reminder of the city surviving "The Blitz."

Also, the architect who built St. Paul's, Christopher Wren, is buried inside the church. Evidently the wall above his tomb says, "Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you." He appears to be one of London's most famous architects as many of the buildings we saw on our tour were designed by him. He also contributed to some of the buildings in Oxford (he studied astronomy there as a student). Prince Charles and Diana were married in this church as well.

Rafe is shown lighting a candle here and Sean was able to take a photograph before we learned you can't take any photographs in the church! Rafe wanted to light candles for family members at all of the churches we visited.