The Most Impressive Church in Paris (Not Notre Dame)

Gothic architecture, distinguished by its use of pointed arches, ribbed vaults and flying buttresses flourished in France in the 13th century, in a period of architecture known as High Gothic, where the construction of cathedrals reached an exceptional level of refinement and height. Around 1230, there was a reaction against the huge scale of High Gothic cathedrals, and architects began to use the same structural approach on smaller-scaled buildings, which brought a new sense of intimacy and an increased complexity of detail now intended to be appreciated at close quarters. This new style was later known as Rayonnant Gothic. The word rayonnant is French for radiant, and this name is due to the rays of light that radiate through the windows. The nature of the style made it ideal for palace chapels, of which the most spectacular example is the Saint-Chapelle in Paris. Built between 1242 and 1248, the Saint-Chapelle was commissioned by King Louis IX to house the relics of the passion which he had acquired from the Emperor of Constantinople, among them the These relics cost him twice as much as the construction of the building, and he brought them to France in 1238. The Ile de la Cité, the heart of the city of Paris since antiquity, was dominated by Notre-Dame Cathedral on the east, and on the west by the Palais de la Cité, the royal residence of the kings of France in the Middle Ages, making the island the seat of political and religious power. The chapel was built attached to the Palais de la Cité as a symbol of the king's piety and authority. So as you approach the building, standing within a small courtyard inside the palace, you'll notice its structure is slightly different than the larger cathedrals. In Gothic cathedrals, you have flying buttresses to hold the structure of the arches. But because this building is so small, flying buttresses would prevent light from passing through the windows, and the main objective of Gothic architecture is to get as much light as possible inside the building. So in order to be able to have such small buttresses that could support the thrust of the vaults, the architect of the Saint-Chapelle designed a system of internal iron rods that encircle the building, linking the buttresses horizontally. These rods are concealed in the masonry and pass across the windows, also serving as the framework that supports the glass. Thanks to this ingenious dematerialization of the structure, and to the wondrous properties of medieval stained glass, the interior of the Saint-Chapelle has no equal, as the chapel is flooded with colorful rays of light that enrich the spiritual and divine experience of entering the chapel. The arrangement of the pinnacles and other elements such as the balustrade, the gargoyles and the exterior tracery mimic the shape of a reliquary reflecting the building's purpose, but they also mimic the shape of a medieval crown with its jewels and ornaments. This resemblance to a crown could be interpreted as a symbolic homage to the relic it was built to enshrine, reinforcing its spiritual and sacred significance. Making the total height of the building over 75 meters, the spire is built of cedar wood and covered with lead for weather resistance. Statues of saints, gargoyles and ornate carvings highlight the craftsmanship and the attention to detail. The spire not only accentuates the verticality of the building, making it visible from the distance, but also serves as a symbolic element that stretches towards the heavens. The Saint-Chapelle has two levels. In the ground floor there is a room with a low ceiling that was a chapel for the servants of the royal palace, while the spacious upper chapel was used by the royal family and the court. The ground chapel is accessed from the courtyard and the upper chapel is accessed from the palace. From the main façade, you can appreciate the double height of the upper chapel. The rose window of the Saint-Chapelle was built in the 15th century, using a later style of Gothic architecture known as flamboyant, which is French for flaming, and it was called that because you can see how the stone tracery has curves forming flame-like shapes. Other elements from the exterior are also from the 15th century, such as the two small spires on top of the two towers on each side of the main façade, both decorated with fleurs-de-lis beneath sculpted crowns of thorns. As you enter the ground chapel, you'll notice the polychromy on the interior. Usually Gothic architecture is not colored, but the walls, columns and traceries of the Saint-Chapelle are completely painted with bright colors such as gold, red and green, and the vaults are painted of royal blue with fleurs-de-lis. The columns inside alternate between red and blue, and each represent the two royal families from which the king, Louis IX, descended. The blue columns with the fleurs-de-lis represent the Capetian dynasty through his father, and the red columns with the golden castle represent the kingdom of Castile in Spain through his mother. And at the end of the chapel, in the center, you'll see a statue of Louis IX, known also as King Saint Louis. This chapel is very compact as it has columns in the middle of the space, and the ceilings are low giving a cave-like effect thanks to how close you can see the vaults. As I said, originally you would have entered each chapel through the central portal on each floor, but the way you access the upper chapel now as you visit the Saint-Chapelle is through the spiral staircases on the sides after visiting the ground floor chapel. So after being compacted in the lower chapel, and then compacted even more as you climb up the narrow stairs, you finally get to the upper chapel that gives you an amazing expansion of light and space. Because of the structure conformed of thin buttresses, there are almost no walls inside. The whole space is contained by 670 square meters of stained glass. Most of the glass panels are original, and they depict 1,113 scenes from the The three central windows of the apse represent scenes of the life of Jesus, taken from the New Testament. All the windows on the north and south sides, except for the last one on the south corner, represent scenes from the Old Testament, such as the creation, or scenes from the life of Moses. The window on the corner depicts the history of the relics that were held in the chapel, presenting King Louis IX as the legitimate successor of the kings of Israel. And finally, the rose window, being oriented towards the west, depicts the book of Revelation, symbolizing the end of times. The most fascinating thing about the scenes depicted in the windows is that, although they are biblical scenes from antiquity, the characters are depicted as medieval people, wearing medieval clothes and armor, and walking in medieval towns surrounded by medieval castles. Kings from antiquity wearing medieval crowns, and ancient priests wearing medieval clothes. These biblical scenes are presented through a medieval lens, because artists from the Middle Ages could only draw upon their contemporary concept of king, attire, and architecture. The plan of the chapel has 33 meters in length, and 10.5 meters in width, and the vaults reach a height of 20.5 meters. A small space for a gothic building, yet it retains that sense of verticality characteristic of gothic architecture. The bottom of the walls have a place for the court members to sit, and in the third traverse of the chapel, there is a niche carved in each side of the walls, each decorated with archivolts and sculpture angels, and richly painted. These spaces were for the king and queen to sit during ceremonies. At the end of the chapel lies the altar, which once held the 22 relics that King Louis IX had acquired. The gothic altar is adorned with gilded elements and intricate carvings, and it serves as a focal point of the chapel's interior, drawing the eye upwards towards the stained glass windows and the vaulted ceiling. You can see that the vaults from the upper chapel are also painted blue, but instead of having painted fleurs-de-lis like the lower chapel, they have golden stars. This distinction in decoration visually represents the medieval belief in the divine right of kings, where the monarchy is seen as ruling under divine authority. The fleurs-de-lis in the lower chapel symbolize the monarchy's protection over its subjects, while the starry ceiling in the upper chapel symbolizes the heavens, emphasizing the royal family's proximity to God. Just outside the chapel in the top level, you can see the main portal through which the royal family and its court would access the chapel back in the Middle Ages. You can see the figure of Christ in the center of the tympanum. Next to him are two angels with the two main relics that the chapel held, the crown of thorns and the cross, and on the sides are Virgin Mary and John the Baptist. Below, the lintel shows Saint Michel weighing the souls of the dead. Those sent to heaven on the left, and the damned on the right. On the lower walls, you see panels depicting biblical scenes. On the left, you have the creation, and on the right, Noah's Ark. Most of the portal was destroyed during the French Revolution, and it was remade by a French sculptor in the 19th century. Several parts of the Sainte-Chapelle were damaged during the revolution, and in the 1840s, scholars, archaeologists, and architects restored the chapel to its medieval state, being as faithful as possible with the original drawings and descriptions that had survived. The most famous of these architects was Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, who, after working on the Sainte-Chapelle, dedicated his life to restore Gothic architecture, most notably the In the Middle Ages, Jean de Jandin, a French writer, described the experience of entering the Sainte-Chapelle, which gives us a sense of what medieval people thought when entering these impressive Gothic churches. But also that most beautiful of chapels, the Chapel of the King, most fittingly situated underneath the walls of the Royal Palace, is graced with the most firm and indissoluble structure of the most solid of the stones, the most select colors of paints, the precious gilding of the images, the decorous transparency of the glowing glass all around, the most beautiful ornaments of the altars, the wonderful virtues of the sanctuaries, the design of the reliquaries externally adorned with gleaming gems, and so great exaggeration of beauty is generously given to that house of prayer, that upon entering it, as if carried off to heaven, one would not without reason think has entered one of the most precious chambers of paradise. I hope you learned and enjoyed, please like this video, subscribe to my channel, and if you like Paris, there's more coming out of Paris very soon, and there's a playlist on my channel that you can go check out. Thanks for watching and I'll see you very soon in the next episode. Goodbye!