A jeweled room

Last Thursday the cathedrals class went to a concert in Sainte-Chapelle, a tiny Gothic chapel (well, relatively speaking) a few blocks up from Notre Dame. It's nestled right in the Palais de Justice complex -- in fact security is so tight you have to walk through a metal detector to get in, and you end up exiting through the Palais itself -- but once you're inside this little stained-glass paradise you forget about all the courts surrounding you. The chapel was constructed as a reliquary for the reliquary for the crown of thorns (Gothic architects liked nesting such symbols inside each other), exclusively for French royalty. The downstairs chapel is delightful and beautifully painted, albeit in the same nineteenth-century restoration effort that touched Notre Dame, but the upper chapel, which is where the crown of thorns resided, is the true jewel. In fact there is more stained glass than wall. Although we weren't there at a very bright time of day, we'll return for class before the course is over, I think.

Here are a few photos from the delicate, intricate Sainte-Chapelle. One shows the reliquary for the crown of thorns, which is now kept at Notre Dame instead and displayed for veneration there monthly.