The Cathedral at Chartres

The road from Tours to Versailles passes right through the town of Chartres. Every town in Europe of any standing has a cathedral of some sort. Chartres, however, has the one that all others are measured against.

As you drive toward Paris on the N10 highway, the landscape is about as flat as any in France. The Chartres cathedral stands out on the horizon like a battleship on the ocean. From eight miles away we could see it clearly - floating over the yellow fields of rapeseed. If you were a traveller in the old days, you didn't need any roadsigns to find Chartres.

When you actually get into the city, you find that the cathedral is perched on bluff that looks out over the plains below. To me, the thing that is most different about this cathedral is that it is not boxed in or hidden by other buildings in the town center. It's just there in the open - daring you to look at it. You can get far enough away to look at the spires without having to bend your neck backwards.

Cathedral lovers love Chartres because it has it all...flying buttresses, gargoyles, ornate carvings outside and inside, and lots of tradition.

And then, there's the stained glass. It goes on forever, from floor to vaulting, from one window to the next as you walk around the interior. Some of the windows date back to the 1100's - so old, they taught me in college, that the glass has detectably deformed due to years of gravity. Obviously, there have not been many baseball games near the cathedral over the years.Something I'd never heard of was the Labyrinth. Sorry that the following picture is not very good. Seems that there is a labyrinth mapped into the floor of the cathedral and it is an old tradition to walk it and pray. The tradition seems to be strong, as there were several people making their way during the time we visited.