The story of this place
After a fire destroyed the earlier church in 1194—sparing its treasured relic, the Sancta Camisia said to be the tunic of the Virgin Mary—Chartres was rebuilt with astonishing speed in barely 26 years, producing the most complete surviving example of high-Gothic architecture. Its 176 stained-glass windows, dominated by the celebrated 'Chartres blue', are among the finest medieval glass in the world. During the Second World War, American Colonel Welborn Griffith Jr., ordered to shell the cathedral suspecting German observers, instead risked his life to verify it was empty—saving it, and dying in action nearby days later. The labyrinth set into its nave still draws pilgrims.