The Chartres Cathedral is located in of Chartres, a town near Paris that seems too small to fit the Cathedral. Not only is Chartres Cathedral one of the finest examples of the French High Gothic style, it is almost perfectly preserved. The majority of the original stained glass windows survive intact, while the architecture has seen only minor changes since the early 13th century.t was the destination of a pilgrimage dedicated to the Virgin Mary, among the most popular in all medieval Western Christianity. Because of the unity of its architecture and decoration, the result of research of the first Gothic era, its immense influence on the art of Middle Age Christianity, Chartres Cathedral appears as an essential landmark in the history of medieval architecture. Its spiritual intensity is heightened by the fact that no direct light enters the building. All the light is filtered through stained glass, so that the whole experience of visiting the Chartres Cathedral seems out of this world.
The interior of the Chartres cathedral is remarkable. The nave, wider than that of any other cathedral in France (52 feet, or 16 meters), is in the purest 13th-century ogival style.
In its center is a maze, the only one still intact in France, with 320 yards (290 meters) of winding passages, which the faithful used to follow on their knees.
The warm glow of the light inside the cathedral results from the incomparably beautiful stained-glass windows, which date mostly from the 14th century.
The Chartres Cathedral was built following a fire that largely destroyed the previous church in 1194, the new choir being complete by 1221 and the whole building consecrated in 1260 as one of the most compelling expressions of the strength and poetry of medieval Catholicism.
