The Gothic masterpiece — where 12th-century builders solved the riddle of light and stone to create the most influential cathedral in Western architecture
Chartres is a small city of 40,000 on the Beauce plain southwest of Paris, dominated by its UNESCO-listed Gothic cathedral — Notre-Dame de Chartres, begun in 1194 after a fire destroyed an earlier Romanesque church. The cathedral is considered the highest achievement of French Gothic architecture and has been called 'the finest stained glass in the world': 176 windows spanning 2,600 square metres of 12th and 13th-century glass (including the extraordinary rose windows) survived intact because the glass was removed for safe storage before both World Wars. The town itself preserves a medieval s…
Chartres has been a sacred site since pre-Christian times — the Druids held ceremonies in a grotto that became the crypt of the Christian church. The first Christian basilica was built here in the 4th century, and Chartres' possession of the Sancta Camisia (the tunic said to have been worn by the Virgin Mary at the Nativity, donated by Charlemagne) made it one of the most important pilgrimage destinations in medieval Europe. The fire of 1194 destroyed most of the Romanesque church but spared the Sancta Camisia and the Royal Portal (now the west façade); the new Gothic cathedral was built with…