Today we drove to Caen to visit with Julien and Kate, whose wedding we attended in 2011 in Normandy. It's about a 4.5 hour drive so we broke that up by visiting Chartres on the way. Chartres has one of the most spectacular cathedrals (Notre Dame de Chartres) anywhere with a very long history. As we drove north approaching Chartres we came up a small hill and saw this immense church on a hill in the distance. Apparently pilgrims to this church have used its spire to guide them in from many miles away as recently as the day before our visit. Our tour guide told us they'd actually walked from Paris as a pilgrimage. If you do go to Chartres, and you must if you have a day to spare while in the Paris area, be sure to have a tour by Malcolm Miller. He's an 80 year old Chartres scholar whose been studying the iconography in the cathedral all his adult life and has been giving tours of it for 56 years now. We only spent a couple of hours there but that was woefully inadequate. (48°26'50.5"N, 1°29'13.9"E)
The North Porch central bay shows Jesus crowning Mary after her arrival in heaven. Below that central sculpture on the left is Mary on her death bed with one of the apostles checking for a heart beat, and on the right angels lifting her out of her sarcophagus to take her to heaven. The archway is fully carved with symbolic figures. Below, the figures flanking the doorway start with Melchizedek on the left and proceed through Abraham, Moses, Aaron or Samuel and King David, then on the right continue with Isaiah, Jeremiah, Simeon, John the Baptist and Peter. The pictures below show a lot of symbolism to anyone who knows their biblical stories (for instance, Abraham is holding Isaac to be sacrificed but is listening to an angel (above Mel) while a lamb shows up - under foot - to be sacrificed instead). The other quite striking symbolism is Mel and Peter both have bread and wine in a chalice (Peter's is broken off - damaged as are many of the statues following the French Revolution in the late 1700s).
Here`s a few more pictures from the outside.
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| The last photo is of the labyrinth in the centre of the cathedral that many visitors walk, some in prayer. |
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