A couple of weeks ago, and in spite of the cold and snowy weather, we decided to go to Chartres (about a 100km south of Paris) and visit one of the greatest gothic-(and Romanesque) cathedrals in France.
The present cathedral was finished in the early 13th century (1223) after a fire had partly destroyed the previous Romanesque one (the south tower and the façade are what remains of thRomanesqueee cathedral). During the Revolution it was decided that such a monument should be not only vandalised, but demolished, but of course, such enterprise had to be carefully planned and a commission was set to see to it. Fortunately, the discussions of the commission took so long that they never managed to finish the demolition plans, and the cathedral survived.
Our visit started by a short walk around the medieval quarters of Chartres, and by checking the schedule of guided tours to the cathedral. As it was freezing, we had almost two hours to the guided tour, and it was about the right time, we decided to go for lunch to one of the 'bistro' recommended in out tourist-guide. What we didn't know was that that precise weekend Chartres was celebrating the anniversary of the crowning of Henry the 4th (the only French King crowned here... the other ones were crowned at Reims), and all restaurants were very busy, serving the same menu (it seems that Henry the 4th was known to like a type of chicken soup). The problem with that was that it took about 3 hours to have the four courses (skipping coffee), so we missed by about 1 hour the guided tour we wanted to take. Anyway, it was fun, and the food was really excellent (I should include the menu on the blog).
Anyway, finally we made it to the cathedral, and we were astonished by it. We were late to take the guided tour to the cathedral, but just in time to the one of its crypt, which contains some of the most interesting aspects of the visit. To start with, the hill where the cathedral stands was considered by the druids to be a site of great power, and it had been used for a long time for their rituals. It is possible to see on the side of thcryptpt a round well with a square bottom, with its wallperfectlyty oriented to the cardinal points, that was used in those times for some rituals. Thcryptpt holds the Sancta Camisia, a tunic that was supposed to belong to the Virgin Mary, brought back from thcrusadeses, and donated to the Cathedral by Charlemagne. In the same chapel of the crypt there is the reproduction (the original was lost in a fire), of the Virgin of the Underworld (named like that in the Spanish and French versions of the brochure of the visit, but not in the English translation), a famous Black Virgin. The term Black Virgin refers to those images of a woman with child, that although nowadays are revered as images of the Virgin, they were possibly images of early goddesses previous to Christian influence.
The crypt itself was the last stage of the pilgrimage to Chartres. Pilgrims entered it by the South Tower (the old one, symbolising the Old Testament), and walked all the circa 130m of the corridor that is the crypt, raising into the main nave of the church, and into the light, by the North Tower, which symbolises the New Testament.
On the floor of the nave of the upper church there's a labyrinth (unfortunately mostly hidden by chairs and benches), which was also a symbolic representation of the pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
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