The Town of Chartres and its Cathedral

We decided to go see something outside of Paris, and the town of Chartres was just 1 hour and 20 minutes away.  So we set off in the car, hoped that it would stay partly sunny and arrived in Chartres a bit before lunch.  You can see the cathedral from anywhere around town because it is so massive and sits up on a hill:

 We decided to have lunch before going to the cathedral.  Chuck opted for a local specialty--a kind of stuffed sausage.  Me, I had something normal--fettucine with salmon.  Good thing--Chuck took one bit and decided it rated along with snails (which makes two things he absolutely cannot eat). So we shared my meal!

Chartes cathedral is one of the great cathedrals of Europe.  The current cathedral (there was one before it) dates from the 12th and 13th centuries (that's amazingly old).  Here's a view of the cathedral from the front and a side view so you can see the flying buttresses of the cathedral.




While the outside is impressive, the inside is even more so.  The cathedral has over 100 stained glassed windows, most of which date from the 1200s.  There are three rose windows, two of which I got decent pictures of:

The back rose window, appears not to be colored, which is just because the lighting prevented my camera from getting the amazing colors of the window.  But importantly, the wall around the window is very light--the back wall has been restored, while the walls around it (which are very dark in the photo) have not been restored yet.



As one can see below, the front (called the apse) of the cathedral has been recently renovated so all the marble and plaster are clear to see.

The individual windows of the cathedral are also spectacular.  In the picture of the front of the cathedral (left) three individual windows are visible.  Below is another (there are nearly a hundred of these).  Note also that some of the original panes of glass have been lost from this particular window and replaced with rather simple forms.

The window of St. Apollonias

It is possible to go up in one of the towers of the cathedral and Chuck did just that (all 360 steps of it).  Here's a photo he took looking out over the town of Chartres.

Looking out over Chartres

We also visited the International Center for stained glass, which had a whole exhibit on the windows of the cathedral.  It also had a wonderful exhibit of the work of modern German glass artists.  I took lots of photos and a few are below.  The first set, by Xenia Hauser for a church in Germany, doesn't use very much lead between the glass pieces.  Most of pieces are just fitted next to each other.

Closeup of the Hauser window

This window (left) and its closeup right) have no leading at all--just strips of glass and glass colors on the clear background (by the artist David Schnell called "Wand").  You can find more photos by other glass artists  at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/candysidner/sets/72157639440424616/

It was a great day to see glass, and we bought a piece ourselves in a glass store:

So I learned a bit more about glass ands about cathedrals!