Loire Valley to the South of France
With Allan and Carla
Chartres was the starting point of our adventure where we met our group and then our guide Virginie More took us on a tour. It's a very pretty town that ended with a tour of the cathedral by Malcolm
Miller who is now in his 80's and has spent his adult
life studying the church. It dates back to the 12th
century-built 1190-1220 with stained glass being the
most complete group surviving anywhere from the
Middle Ages. On Feb 27,1595 King Henry IV was the
only King crowned at the cathedral.
One more claim to fame was Jean
Moulin who was one of the leaders of
the French Resistance in WW2 before
he was tortured and died at the hands
of the Nazis in 1943. You'll find
memorials and images to him throughout Chartres.
Wow! The light show...The town and its merchants were frustrated because so many of its visitors were day-trippers coming to Chartres by train for a quick peak and then leaving that same day without spending money (sound familiar to the complaints of cruise ship port towns?) So in an effort to get those visitors to consider an overnight stay, the town and merchants collaborated and came up with 'Chartres Lumieres' which is a light show beamed against many of the buildings in town including the Cathedral. Creative thinking to an under-tourism problem.
Probably of interest to nobody but me...one stop on the tour took us to the International Stained Glass Centre to show us how glass is made and how it is restored. The Centre also makes contemporary stained glass for modern churches. While looking at some of the contemporary examples I overheard a couple commenting on how terrible it was that religion is being portrayed in such a modern and informal way. It got me wondering if some people during the Renaissance were disgusted with how those young artists were portraying religious figures in such a 'modern' way?
