Remembering Wren By John Burgess Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, June 14, 1998; Page E01

Although the church to which it was attached did not survive World War II, Wren's St. Augustine-with-St. Faith bell tower still stands. (By John Burgess)

Thus began the Great Fire, which for four days burned its way across the largely wooden city, consuming 13,000 houses, 44 guildhalls, a cathedral and 87 churches. When the flames finally died, most people saw desolation; Wren, an up-and-coming royal architect, saw opportunity. He tramped around the ashes and within days drafted a street and building plan for an all-new London. The king turned it down, but in the end Wren got his way, as he usually did during his long and varied life.

He built churches, 51 of them, and their spires came to define the city skyline, their bells the sounds of urban life. Wherever Londoners turned, they seemed to face a towering Wren creation, its cherubs and stone columns and round arches declaring the superiority of the fashionably new baroque style. At the altars inside, the city's people were baptized and married by the millions; in the crypts and graveyards they were buried and memorialized.

The churches entered lore and literature: St. Bride's with the tiered steeple that inspired the wedding cake, St. Mary-le-Bow with the bells whose sounds set the limits of old-time Cockney London, St. Paul's Cathedral, whose dome reaching 365 feet above its hilltop site signaled to travelers that the journey to London was almost over.

They're still there, most of them at least. Redevelopment, fire and Nazi bombs have thinned them out over the last three centuries. But on a recent stay in London, I went to as many of Wren's remaining churches as I could and found they continue to proclaim the faith and optimism of the period and of their remarkable creator, holding their own against the advance of some awful 20th-century glass and cinder block.

Even if you're not one to normally poke around old churches, give Wren's a try if you're in London. You will marvel at how solid was his construction and how unwavering his aesthetic sense, though with such a huge job to accomplish -- and 51 sets of parish elders tugging at his sleeve -- he did resort, at times, to production-line techniques. He worked within limits of time and space and budget to create in each a unique architectural statement to the glory of God.

"One of the great qualities of genius is audacity and daring," says the Rev. Oswald Clarke, priest-in-charge at a 1681 Wren creation called St. Mary Abchurch. Wren broke the prevailing rules with countless aesthetic and structural tricks.

What follows is a walking tour of a few of his most important churches, ending at St. Paul's, all built with the proceeds from a tax on coal. Go when you're not feeling rushed. Show some respect when you step through the doors and you'll be welcomed (though in many, you'll have the place all to yourself). Take off your hat, don't stand your friends up against the altar for photos. And drop some money through the donation slots by the door.

A word on timing: Don't go on a Sunday -- you'll find some of the churches locked up. They stand in what is now London's financial district, and it's all but deserted on weekends. Better to do it around midday during the week, when many will be open for visitors, or putting on services and music recitals for the lunch-time office crowd.

The term "Renaissance man" is overused, but Wren truly deserves it. Astronomy and optics, Latin and literature, math and anatomy, meteorology and the laws of motion -- he mastered them all and made important contributions in many. He invented a writing duplicator and a transparent beehive.

Detail from St. Paul's Cathedral facade. (By John Burgess)

He branched into architecture at a time when English churches were dominated by the pointed arches and the vertical lines of the medieval Gothic style. But in Italy, people were reviving the forms of classical Rome and Greece -- the rounded arch, the pediment, the three orders of columns -- and were combining them in new ways. Wren believed that any civilized country should naturally follow suit.

He read voraciously to learn the new style, and traveled to Paris, where he managed to wangle some time with the renowned Italian Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, who was working on what's now the Louvre. Perhaps Bernini recognized a competitor when he brought out a design for the east front. "I would have given my skin for it, but the old reserved Italian gave me but a few minutes' view," Wren later wrote.

As we know, he did all right anyway, building palaces, hospitals and libraries as well as churches.

Look up and you see what really counted to him -- the spire, which served as a marker visible for miles. This one is rather simple as Wren spires go -- a slender, lead-covered tower with a see-through section, rising from a curved base. There's a golden orb at the top.

Walk around to the right and enter. Roughly square, the interior dazzles you with a mix of deep polished wood, clear windows (stained glass was too Gothic) and bright white walls. And above, a surprise. "You wouldn't be aware from the outside that there is a dome," says the Rev. Clarke. "It gives you the impression it's floating on the air." Wren was fascinated with domes, as you will see.

Despite the feeling of grandeur, the space is also small -- cozy, even. Under Church of England doctrine, it was important that all people be able to hear clearly the scripture and prayers.

Wren wrote extensively on the mechanics of beauty. But in the real world, he made compromises, working with the space he had. You'll notice that this place isn't symmetrical -- the windows are mainly on the south to get the light. Some of his churches have downright cockeyed wall plans, because to save money he had to build on the foundations of the burned ones.

Take time to examine the fittings -- the elaborated canopied pulpit, the "reredos" with guilded urns that stands behind the altar, the paintings, the font, the side stalls, the sword rest where the Lord Mayor laid his ceremonial weapon during visits.

What you see here is almost exactly as Wren left it -- the church suffered comparatively minor damage during World War II, unlike others that were destroyed altogether or heavily rebuilt. Climb the pulpit -- that's allowed in this church -- and imagine the crowd of London notables in wigs and powder and laced dresses who would have looked up at you from the pews in the old days.

Leave by the door you entered, cross the little square and go down the hill to Cannon Street. Turn right, walk to the street called Walbrook and turn right. On the right ahead you'll see St. Stephen Walbrook. The exterior is again undistinguished (battered, in fact), save for the steeple, which is rather elaborate, a fantasy combination of classical forms, rising to four balls and a vane.

Inside everything is light and airy. Walk around and enjoy the interplay of the Corinthian columns. Overhead is another dome, this one supported by arches. Here you do get the feeling of mathematical perfection. The interior, in fact, is considered Wren's greatest.

This church has been altered and updated to fit the tastes of the times, like many others. Many suffered what can only be called vandalistic changes in the 19th century, when Victorian society became enamored again with the Gothic style. St. Stephen Walbrook has a 20th-century addition that to me fits nicely -- a rounded stone altar by the sculptor Henry Moore.

Turn right as you leave, walk ahead to the street called Poultry and go left on it. It becomes Cheapside. Ahead on your left is St. Mary-le-Bow, perhaps the most famous of the churches. In fact, of what you see today, just the tower and steeple are by Wren, holding their own against a bank branch that nestles up against them. By tradition, to qualify as a true Cockney you must be born within hearing of its bells.

Continue up Cheapside. The back of St. Paul's, looking like a great weathered ship, will come into view on the left, but resist the temptation to make straight for it.

Behind St. Paul's is the tower of Wren's St. Augustine-with-St. Faith -- the church itself fell victim to World War II bombs. On your right you'll see St. Vedast, Foster Lane, another Wren creation with extensive post-war refurbishment, then the tower of Wren's Christ Church, Newgate Street, another war victim. You'll find a few scarred walls and a pleasant garden where worshipers once sat.

By now you'll have noticed that you practically trip over elegant churches in this part of London. It's a testament to how densely populated the area was, and how the church, not to mention competition among parishes to build the tallest and most beautiful, imbued London life of the day.

Keep going and turn left into Old Bailey Street. The church on the right as you turn, St. Sepulchre-Without-Newgate, is one of the few churches that survived the Great Fire. Naturally it's not by Wren, but his way of doing things became so dominant that its interior was remodeled in his style.

Turn right on Ludgate Hill. Ahead on the left you'll see the spire of St. Bride's Fleet Street, a stack of diminishing octagons topped by ball and vane. It's the tallest Wren church spire, said to have inspired a baker-parishioner to create tiered cakes that became the hit of aristocratic weddings in London in the 18th century and live on today.

This is a church with a very long pedigree -- there is Roman pavement beneath it, and the remains of seven previous churches. Descend into the crypt and have a look.

Inside, you'll find a lavishly restored postwar interior, with the East wall painted in a trompe l'oeil that will fool all but the cleverest eye.

By now you know where St. Paul's is. Walk up Ludgate Road, passing another Wren church on the left, St. Martin, Ludgate. To and from this glorious facade have come countless processions of British history, including Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee in 1897 -- she was too infirm to climb the stairs, so ceremonies were held on the steps as she sat in her coach; Charles and Diana walked down them as a married couple.

St. Paul's exists in the form you see mainly because of the force of character of the seemingly self-effacing Wren, who for years dreamed of building a great domed cathedral, not caring much that kings, bishops and the public at large felt that every respectable cathedral had a spire up top. Domes were thought "popish" at the time, symbols of the rival faith centered at St. Peter's at the Vatican.

Politics forced Wren to submit a design with a spire, but St. Paul's got a dome. Ever the manipulator, Wren began deviating from the design from the time the first stone was laid, and from the agreed-to scheduling, too. The 1675 commission from King Charles II clearly states that the cathedral would be built "in parts," starting with the choir, or east end. That was the usual way of building cathedrals -- you got a roof over the choir so you could conduct services, then started on the rest.

Wren apparently worried that construction would stop once the choir was finished, given the huge cost of finishing the place. So he built his cathedral all at once, from the ground up. He had more tricks up his sleeve during the 35 years of construction. London's copper merchants got Parliament to decree that the dome should be of copper. Wren, hating the green it would turn, got there first with lead plates.

Parliament eventually grew tired of the now-aged man's bullheadedness. In 1697, declaring that things were moving too slowly, it decreed that half his salary would be withheld until completion. The job finally ended in 1710.

Before you go in, stand and take in the facade. Almost three centuries of rain and coal smoke have left a weathered look, but the full glory shows through. That's St. Paul, patron saint of London, standing at the top, and him again in the pediment sculpture, seeing a vision on the road to Damascus. The two towers are among Wren's finest creations, topped by gleaming gold pineapples. The one on your right contains a bell, Great Paul, that by tradition rings for five minutes every day at 1 p.m.

This sum statement is different than the churches', and not just in size. Here Wren got to live out all of his notions of proportionality, of exterior ornamentation (count the cherubs!), of classical harmony.

So, enter through the front doors. As in many places in London, you will be charged for entry. You're now in a self-contained city, with a huge transient population of people like yourself and a paid staff of 135 priests, stoneworkers and administrators keeping things going. They don't forget that St. Paul's is a church -- there is a chaplain on duty at all times.

Go ahead -- stride down to the "crossing" and stare up into the dome. Few people can resist. You're looking up into one of Wren's many tricks -- what you see on the inside isn't what you see on the outside. Wren wanted a tall dome visible from miles around, but if you saw the inside of that, it would be like looking up into a tunnel. So there are three domes -- the one you're looking up into, the one you saw outside, which doesn't hold anything up, and a third invisible brick cone that holds up the "lantern" at the top.

Around the side aisles are the historical memorials that the English like to crowd into their churches. At the east end is the American Memorial Chapel, containing a handwritten list of 28,000 U.S. service men and women who were stationed in Britain during World War II and lost their lives.

You might plan to visit at 5 p.m., when an evensong service begins daily. You can sit in the wooden choir stalls. Religious or not, you're sure to be moved as the choir sings just a few yards away, the voices echoing across the wide open spaces.

If you're fit and afraid neither of tight spaces nor dizzying heights, climb the steps to the "Whispering Gallery" in the dome. Sit down and again enjoy the scale and beauty, knowing that during construction Wren was hoisted up in a basket and walked around just where you are. It got its name because words spoken to the walls are heard clearly on the opposite side. Try it.

From the Golden Gallery at the top of the dome, you can gaze out over all London. Standing here was as close to flying as anyone could come in the old days.

Save the crypt for last. You'll have to look hard, but under the east end of the church you'll find a black stone that marks the resting place of Christopher Wren, who succumbed in 1723 at the age of 90.

"Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice," reads his epitaph: "Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you." That's in keeping with the modesty Wren showed throughout much of his life. His monument, to my mind, is 17th-century London itself. For information on travel to London, contact the British Tourist Authority, 212-986-2200, http://www.visitbritain.com.