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planned stop in Chartres, about 55 miles southwest of Paris.
The drive took us though lush, mostly flat farmland, a boon for those approaching by car from this easterly direction, for the spectacular doublespired gothic cathedral rises regally from the plain before you. Built from locally quarried grayish/white stone, the cathedral burned in 1194 but was rebuilt in 30 years in all the splendor of the Gothic style.
We closely inspected the intricately sculpted portals with their three-dimensional figures, and the impressive flying buttresses. The interior contains 175 stained glass windows covering 25,000 square feet depicting over 5,000 figures. The brilliant blue in many of the windows, “Chartres blue,” comes from cobalt mined in Bohemia and nowhere is its intensity and clarity lovelier than in the Blue Madonna window.
There are, in fact, 175 representations of the Virgin Mary in Chartres cathedral, also known as Notre Dame; the Gothic period included a particular reverence for the Virgin known as the “cult of the Virgin."
We lunched outside next door to
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