A Trip to Notre Dame de Toute Grace Plateau d'Assy (Haute-Savoie) David Timmins Everyone who's been at the US Mission to the UN Agencies in Geneva for any time has been to Chamonix, the headquarters for skiing, ice skating, and mountain climbing. So there's no need to recount the beauty of the drive, the magnificence of the Alpine scenery, or the restaurants waiting at the end of the trail to Chamonix. But friends who accompanied us on our outing to Chamonix last weekend insisted we take a small detour on our return by way of La Fayet and Passy to see what they told us there was a gem of a small church well worth a visit. About twenty kilometers north of Chamonix on the road back to Geneva, one passes in the valley to the right the adjoining villages of LaFayet and Passy. If one watches carefully there is a turn off to the Plateau d'Assy located on a hill overlooking the two villages below. Notre Dame de Passy is a modest, relatively new country church built of grey granite with a tall bell tower, but little else to distinguish it from hundreds of other country churches in France. The striking ceramics on the front porch of the church by the noted French artist Fernand Leger are however only a first introduction to its magnificence. The ceramics represent, among other religious motifs, the Ark of the Covenant, the Rose of Sharon, the Morning Star, the Tour d'Ivoire , the Fountain of the Virgin, and David's Tower. But the best lies within. There is a huge Chagall ceramic behind the altar which is impressive. And the twelve stained glass windows along the nave and at the entry, a magnificent Matisse fresco near the altar to the left, and two large bronze statues, one paralleling the Chagal to the right of the altar and the other to the right of the entry door, each one created by such noted artists as Bonnard, Matisse, Roualt, Chagall, Lipchitz, and Lider, are truly magnificent. The windows representing Ste. Therese and the Frescoes of St. Dominique (by Matisse) , St. Francis de Sales (by Bonnard), King David (by Bazaine), and the Suffering Christ (by Roualt) are unforgettable. Germaine Richier's giant crucifix is equally impressive -- but is, if anything, outdone by a 140 cm statue of a stylized Mary surmounted by a symbolic dove above and lamb at her feet -- created, without abandoning his own religious roots, by Jacob Lipchitz -- in honor of the young Jewish woman Mary, mother of Jesus, the greatest Jewish moral teacher of all time. This treasury of contemporary French religious art was not accumulated at enormous outlay. Indeed, could not have been commissioned by this modest country religious community. Rather, Chanoine Devemy and Father Couturier approached a number of noted French artists, inviting each to create a work of art to adorn the new sanctuary of Notre Dame de Toute Grace de Passy. The response was overwhelming; but as a memorial plaque informs the visitor, the work was done neither for glory nor "snobbism", but rather as a contribution by each artist to the Greater Power from whom his artistic talent was a gift. Thus, this otherwise modest edifice, which is open without guard throughout the day, must have hundreds of millions of dollars worth of some of the greatest original art treasures in the world. It is not listed in any tour guides we have consulted. And it takes a sharp eye, and perhaps an inquiry or two, as one searches for Notre Dame on the road from Chamonix to Geneva. But Notre Dame de Toute Grace is a three star visit in my book. Do not miss the crypt, which is entered by walking around the back of the church and taking the stairwell in the rear. The crypt contains a giant fresco by Kijno with a second crucifix in the foreground (by Claude Mary). As one descends the road toward the village of Passy, do not miss the thirty-five foot statue in the town square: a tumble of climbing mountaineers, representing the many guides who, over the years, contributed to the Chamonix Region's reputation as a center of Alpine winter sports and summer hiking. It is reminiscent of the white marble statue of struggling humanity in Oslo's great park. Which reminds one to mention that just as one crosses the border back into Switzerland, returning from Chamonix (though it is really more easily located looking to one's right just before getting on the Freeway leaving Geneva), one notices a small wooden church, built for all the world like one of Norway's few remaining stav kirke . Your author harbors the personal conceit that these were the forerunners of the great Gothic churches of Western Europe. The stave churches were in fact often constructed by the erstwhile builders of the Viking long ships, the people with the most construction experience in the countries of the north. And they architected their churches in the manner they were most accustomed to build, turning their ships upside down to constitute the roofs and naves of the new churches. They of course added a tower stretching into the heavens to house a bell to call the community to worship. This later evolved into the transept tower of the of the far more impressive, great, light, and airy Gothic churches built of stone, which superseded both the modest stave kirke , as well as the dark, heavy Romanesque church architecture which had until then prevailed in the countries which had been under Roman dominion. Lola had earlier noted the resemblance of Geneva's stave kirke to the wooden country churches we had seen in Transylvania during our tour in Bucharest, and whose resemblance to the Scandinavia stave kirke we'd commented on when we first saw them. So perhaps we shouldn't have been surprised when we stopped to see Geneva's own stav kirke , to learn that it was in fact a Romanian Orthodox church built by Romanian residents in Geneva not more than eight years ago The story of Romanian stave kirke construction is that according to the rules of the Austrian overlords of Transylvania (until the end of WW I), Orthodox church's were forbidden to build in stone, reportedly because of hopes that all Romania would in a relatively short period be converted to the Austrian state religion and the wooden churches would be more easily torn down -- or burned -- than stone churches. And Romanian builders, either knowledgeable about Norse church architecture, or perhaps as a powerful example of how different cultures, faced with similar problems, often come up with similar solutions -- came to build virtually identical structures. At any rate, do not miss stopping in Thonon to see the Romanian stave church on your way back from seeing Notre Dame de Toute Grace.