Visit by Craig Kuehl and Elizabeth Seitz

Located about 50 miles southwest of Paris, the charming town of Chartres makes a great day trip from the French capital. Local trains run approximately every hour from the Gare Montparnasse in the 14th arrondissement. The easy journey takes about an hour and costs around 23 euros round trip. The church is a 10-minute walk from the station.

In a country that abounds with gorgeous Gothic churches and cathedrals – Notre Dame de Paris, St. Denis, Reims, Amiens, Bourges, Rouen, to name a few – what is it that makes Chartres so special?

First, Chartres is the best-preserved of all of Europe’s Gothic cathedrals. Today, most of its stained glass and sculptures remain intact from when they were created in the 1100 and 1200’s. Wonderfully enough, the cathedral’s sacred art survived the ravages of time, the mobs of the French Revolution and the destruction of the two World Wars. Sometimes, the acts of preservation were deliberate. In 1939, for example, les vitraux (the stained-glass windows) were removed prior to the invasion of the Germans. They were then restored and replaced after the war. As a result, Chartres has the largest collection in the world of 12th and 13th C. stained glass under one roof.

Second, the architectural design of Chartres is amazingly unified. The fact that the church was built in the space of about 30 years – very quickly as far as cathedral-building goes – is a main contributor. A bit of history: There have been five churches on the site of Chartres, each previous one destroyed by fire or war. After the great fire of 1194, the cathedral as we know it today was rebuilt in the early 1200’s. To be fair, some details of the church have changed over time, like the north spire which was destroyed by lightning in 1506 and then rebuilt in the flamboyant Gothic style. (This answers the question about why the two spires are different!) But it is important to remember that most medieval churches have undergone significant alterations since their construction. At Chartres, the architecture of this medieval church has remained remarkably consistent over the centuries.

British-born Malcolm Miller began giving tours of the cathedral in 1958. Miller is at his best when leading English-speaking tours of the church and its iconography. Mr. Miller continues to give private cathedral tours, by reservation only (millerchartres@aol.com).

Miller likened the cathedral to a library, yet the texts are not books; they are the narratives contained in the 12th and 13th century-stained glass and sculptures. At the time the church was built, paper was nearly non-existent, and printing had not been invented. Most people could not read or write but they could ‘read’ the sacred texts of the colorful windows. According to Miller, Chartres cathedral is like a book with the church’s architecture as its spine. The text is the unfolding of time from Creation to the Last Judgment as seen in the medieval stained glass and sculpture.

As we took our tour, we could see that restoration of the church is ongoing. It is clear which parts have been newly cleaned and which still are dark with soot and pollution whether in stone or glass. A couple of weeks after our visit, a large section of the church was going to be closed off for some time as the painstaking work began. American Friends of Chartres (AFC) raised funds to restore Bay 140 of stained glass, in the upper clerestory of the nave. AFC had previously financed the restoration of five lancets in the South Portal, and the restoration of five 12^th century statue-columns. It is now raising funds for Bays 117 and 125 in the Northern Transept to be restored in 2022-23.