The Chartres Cathedral is a milestone in the development of Western architecture because it employs all the structural elements of the new Gothic architecture: the pointed arch; the rib-and-panel vault; and, most significantly, the flying buttress. The cathedral is also celebrated for its many stained-glass windows and sculptures.

The Chartres Cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is the main attraction in the city, but not the only one. Just behind the cathedral, in the former Bishop’s Palace, is the Fine Arts Museum. Erected in the 17th and 18th centuries, the museum houses a significant collection of paintings, sculptures, enamels, and documents that relate to ...

The cathedral at Chartres was among the first sites to be included in the Unesco list of world heritage in 1979. It is regarded as one of the great masterpieces of Gothic architecture. Chartres was the first cathedral to use flying buttresses extensively. At the time of its building, it had the tallest roof in the Western world (about 38 meters).

The Chartres Cathedral stands at the highest point in this small town and in all the countryside around. Nothing near it can compare. Chartres is, in its domain, the highest note in the scale, the great rock perched above a sea of roofs and expanse of land. The pilgrims who came here must have felt the significance of having, in their final ...

Quick Facts about Chartres Cathedral. → Date of UNESCO inscription: 1979 → Length: 130 meters → Width: 32 meters → Height of nave: 37 meters → Width of nave: 16.4 meters → Height of NW tower: 113 meters → Height of SW tower: 105 meters. People sometimes think of Gothic architecture as dark and sombre, but that is not the way that the original architects and …

When Chartres was rebuilt after the fire of 1194, both the scale and extent of cathedral imagery had changed. Gothic Chartres was conceived as a pilgrimage church with prodigious transepts, each treated like a west front with three portals and porches.

Besides the Chartres Cathedral, the former Benedictine abbey church of St Pierre was rebuilt from the 12th century, it is especially notable for its fine late 13th-century and 14th-century glass. The population of Chartres is less than 40,000 and it is dominated by the gothic cathedral. History of Chartres. Chartres was an important center in ...

The west portal of Chartres Cathedral, known as the Royal Portal, was part of a campaign to beautify the cathedral, which began in the time of Bishop Ivo (reg 1090–1116). It is an integral part of a new west front made for an extension of the nave of Fulbert’s cathedral.

Chartres Cathedral, built of limestone, is around 34 m high and 130 m long internally. It has a four-bay choir with double aisles and a double ambulatory with six radiating chapels, of which three are shallow and three, reflecting the surviving crypt chapels, are deeper.

Chartres belongs to the category of three-storey churches that included several churches at Laon, Soissons and Braisne, which might be described as Laon Cathedral with the gallery omitted. The distinctive feature is the triforium; otherwise the formula was common throughout the 12th century for middle-order churches (e.g. the choirs of Saint ...