Day 22 - Chartres Cathedral

On Tuesday, we started out at the Gare Montparnasse to hop a train to the small French town of Chartres, which contains a cathedral that’s one of the oldest in France and one of the largest in the world! It’s only about an hour by train (and this is local train, not high speed), and as soon as we walk out of the small station, we can see the cathedral. Parts of the cathedral date from the 1100’s, and the most recent parts were added in the 16^th century. The highest spire reaches 370 feet, and the ground area is 117,000 square feet. It’s massive. It’s hard to miss.

So we walk over there, passing through parts of the picturesque town. Given that most of what we see while traveling is big cities (like Paris), it’s a nice change of pace to see a small place relatively unchanged through the years. Everything was very clean and well kept, another nice change from all the graffiti we’ve gotten more and more accustomed to in Paris. We get to the cathedral, just in awe of it’s size, and of course all the detailed sculptures that adorn it, all the flying buttresses (because who doesn’t love those) and the two giant spires. The inside is giant, of course, and quite dark – there are hundreds of huge, beautiful stained glass windows, which are currently undergoing a very careful cleaning process. It’s obvious instantly which ones have been cleaned, and which ones still carry decades of grime. First, we walk around the whole cathedral, no small task. There’s a choir screen that goes around a big part of the center, intricately carved. There are several smaller chapels off to the sides, dedicated to one saint or another. The part of the chapel semi-enclosed by the choir screen is off limits, some renovation is going on.

We had read that there is a tour given in English twice per day, and after a bit of initial exploring, we are right on time for the first one, at noon. Our guide, Malcolm Miller, is a British man who has, as of this year, been giving tours of Chartres Cathedral for fifty years! He has written five books on the cathedral (we bought one at the gift shop), and gives lectures around the world. During the hour and a half tour, we are given details about the building and history of Chartres, as well as information and details on some of the individual windows inside and sculptures outside the cathedral. We learned how the stories of saints were told through stained glass to a largely illiterate 12^th century population, and how, during both World Wars, all of the windows were individually moved from the cathedral and hidden a hundred miles away in order to spare them. There are 176 stained glass windows, most of them comprised of about 24 individual panes, each pane with various pieces to make a scene. We found out that the whole cathedral is in the process of being cleaned, and in five years, it will look like new. We’d noticed a difference in two of the chapels toward the back which looked brand new, gleaming tiles and white arches. One of these holds the holy relic of Chartres, an article of fabric said to have belonged to the Virgin Mary, given to the cathedral by Charlemagne in 876. Anyway, it was amazing to see the difference that the cleaning had made in parts of the cathedral, just cleaning, not replacing. It seems to us that all of these places are just made of huge dark gray stones and intended that way, but apparently they were all painted and vibrant at some point, on the inside and on the sculptures at least. Mr. Miller pointed out some places on the walls where you could see the old paint poking through. The story was that in the years following the French Revolution, the Church no longer had the wealth necessary to properly maintain the buildings. Rather than the expensive task of repainting, they painted over with plaster, hence the gray hue to everything.

We had a great time on the tour, took lots of pictures, then decided to break for lunch. We’d brought with us some crackers, cheese, sausage, water, and dino gummies. We found a little grassy park behind the cathedral with a grand view overlooking the town and laid out our spread. After eating, we took the long route back around to explore a bit of the city, walking through a tree lined bike path, passing some awesome old-style houses and the tiny river. Back at the cathedral, we looked more closely at some of the famous windows, and the clean chapels versus the ones yet to be done (the difference is shocking – look at the pictures!). Then, we went to climb the New Tower (the one from the 16^th century – this is “new” in the relative sense). There are about three hundred steps up, just one long stone spiral, though there are a few small landings and a place to walk outside halfway up and at the top. The top had a great view, you could see everything in Chartres, and probably beyond, you could see the gargoyles, greater detail in the architecture, everything. We took quite a few pictures before starting the descent back down. After stopping in the gift shop, we headed back out and took our time getting to the train station. The trip back to Paris was easy. I bought some French magazines at the newsstand, which I still haven’t read, though I’m excited to. Another great day trip down, one more to go.

-Steph

P.s. The picture below is the result of the story that follows: As we were at the top of the New Tower, we decided that we needed a picture of the two of us at the tower but didn't want another photo of us just holding a hand out and taking one of just our faces. In the photos you'll see in a lot of the corners of the walls designs of flowers, and dog/lizard like animals. Steph was already in the higher part that the stairs up through the tower reached, and I was on a slightly lower level that went around the perimeter of the top. I handed my bags to Steph, ran back down and set the camera up to point in Steph's direction. We couldn't see or use the screen on the camera to tell us if we were pointing the camera in the right direction or not, but we knew we had it pretty close to what we needed. I set the timer on the camera for 10 seconds, balanced it up the top of the flower in the corner of the wall, hit the button and ran into the stair case, up a few spiral stairs and next to Steph with enough time to smile and hear the picture be taken. This photo is the result of a lot of great guess work and lucky balancing.

-Kyle