Items26The creator’s order
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Chartres CathedralIf you can make only one trip, make it this one. Chartres is famous above all for its medieval stained glass, and the deep blues are at their best on a bright morning, when the nave fills with colored light. Entry is free, and the doors are open from 8:30am to 7:30pm all year.
Time a visit for a…0 - 2
Notre-Dame de ParisNotre-Dame reopened on December 7, 2024, after five years of reconstruction following the 2019 fire, and seeing the rebuilt cathedral is reason enough to come. Entry to the cathedral is free. Booking a free timed slot is no longer compulsory, but visitors without one join a separate, lower-priority…0 - 3
Reims CathedralThe coronation church of the French kings, and the west front shows why: a cliff of sculpture with 63 giant statues in its Gallery of Kings. Look for the Smiling Angel by the north portal, a rare grin in Gothic stone. It was blown apart when the cathedral was bombed in 1914 and later restored,…0 - 4
Amiens CathedralChoose Amiens for sheer scale. It is the biggest cathedral in France, 145 meters long and 70 meters wide at the transept, and the nave feels taller than it has any right to be.
Two things repay a longer stay. The 16th-century carved wooden choir stalls are magnificent and easy to miss if you…0 - 5
Bourges CathedralThe glass lover's alternative to Chartres, and usually far quieter. Bourges was begun around 1195, at much the same time as Chartres, and apart from the axial chapel it still keeps most of its original ambulatory glass from about 1215, some of the finest 13th-century windows anywhere. Walk the…0 - 6
Beauvais CathedralGothic ambition at its limit. The choir at Beauvais has the tallest vault of any Gothic choir, 46.7 meters, and standing under it is a lesson in what medieval builders dared. They paid for it: part of the vault collapsed in 1284 and the choir was rebuilt with extra piers, and the lantern tower over…0 - 7
Laon CathedralLaon is Gothic near its beginning, built mainly between 1155 and 1235, at the same time as Notre-Dame de Paris, and it crowns the hilltop medieval town. Five of the seven towers once planned were built, and sixteen carved stone oxen look out from them, said to honor the animals that hauled the…0 - 8
Rouen CathedralThe west front Claude Monet painted in a series of 28 canvases, and standing in the square where he worked, watching the light change on the stone, is the best way to understand them. The south tower is the Tour de Beurre, the Butter Tower, said to have been paid for by wealthy believers who bought…0 - 9
Strasbourg CathedralBuilt of pink Vosges sandstone that shifts from pale pink to deep red as the light changes, Strasbourg has a single spire, 466 feet high, that made it the world's tallest building from 1647 to 1874. The lopsided silhouette, one tower and one spire, is unforgettable over the old town's roofs.
Climb…0 - 10
Cologne CathedralCologne was begun in 1248 and finished to its medieval design only in 1880, and the result is the most overwhelming Gothic facade in Germany. The climb up the south tower is 533 steps to a platform about 97 meters up, with no lift. Halfway up you pass St. Peter's Bell in the belfry, the natural…0