Yale professor R. Howard Bloch reads the Saint Anne portal of Notre-Dame's west facade, the oldest of the cathedral's three entrances, as a sculpted narrative meant to be followed scene by scene. He starts at the trumeau with Saint Marcel, then works through the story of the childless Anne and Joachim drawn from the Golden Legend: Joachim's rejection at the temple, the angel's promise at the Golden Gate, Mary's betrothal to the elderly Joseph and his rod that miraculously flowers, and the Nativity itself. Bloch ties the carved sequence back to Christ's royal lineage through Solomon and David, showing how the portal functions almost like a staged play in stone. Part of the Yale course The Age of Cathedrals, the lecture treats the facade as a text to be interpreted scene by scene rather than admired as decoration, pairing close visual reading with the medieval literary source that shaped it.