Chartres is a French commune, prefecture of the department of
Eure-et-Loir, in the Center-Val de Loire region. The city is located
about ninety kilometers from Paris (center). It is nicknamed
"Capital of light and perfume".
According to the 2016 census,
the town has 38,752 inhabitants. In 2015, the agglomeration
community of Chartres had 136,373 inhabitants and the urban area of
Chartres had 146,986 inhabitants. It is the first town in the
department of Eure-et-Loir and the sixth in the Center-Val de Loire
region behind Tours, Orléans (the regional capital), Bourges, Blois
and Châteauroux.
Chartres is traditionally a place of
pilgrimage, especially on Palm Sunday for students, as well as
Pentecost for the pilgrimage to Christianity. The city is also
located on the Via Turonensis of the pilgrimage to Santiago de
Compostela.
Notre-Dame de Chartres Cathedral
Notre-Dame de Chartres
Cathedral is a Roman Catholic cathedral located in the heart of the
city of Chartres in the French department of Eure-et-Loir, in the
Center-Val de Loire region. Seat of the diocese of Chartres, it is
one of the emblematic monuments of Gothic architecture.
Located 80 kilometers southwest of Paris, it is traditionally
considered the most representative, most complete and best-preserved
Gothic cathedral in France with its sculptures, stained-glass
windows and paving for the most part original, although it is built
with the techniques of Romanesque architecture thus showing the
continuity and not the rupture between these two types of
architecture.
The current cathedral, in the so-called
"classical" Gothic style, was built at the beginning of the
thirteenth century, for the most part in thirty years, on the ruins
of a previous Romanesque cathedral, destroyed in a fire in 1194.
Grand place of pilgrimage, it dominates the city of Chartres and the
plain of Beauce, revealing itself to the eye from more than ten
kilometers away.
The building is the subject of a
classification as historical monuments by its census on the list of
1862. Moreover, it is among the first monuments registered on the
World Heritage List by UNESCO in 1979.
The Picassiette house is an example of naive architecture made up of
earthenware and glass mosaics cast in cement. It is located in
Chartres and depends on the city's museum of fine arts.
The
house was built by a single man Raymond Isidore (September 8, 1900 -
September 7, 1964), said Picassiette, municipal employee of the city
of Chartres for which he worked as a road mender, then sweeper of
the cemetery.
Once his house was built, he had the idea of
making frescoes covering everything little by little. His life was
totally devoted to the construction and decoration of his house and
the garden, in particular with the help of ceramic and porcelain
debris, among others the plates that he obtained in public
landfills, hence his nickname "picnic".
Considered an
original, Raymond Isidore received a late media coverage: in the
1950s, the press took an interest in him. But his end of life, in
his space saturated with mosaics, is tragic. His inspiration dried
up, himself exhausted, he experienced mental disorders. On a stormy
night, he fled from home through the fields, in the grip of a
delirium of the end of the world. Found and brought home, he died
shortly after.
The Saint-Pierre church is a church in Chartres (Eure-et-Loir), classified as a historic monument since 1840. Before the Revolution, it was the church of the Saint-Père-en-Vallée abbey (Father meaning here Pierre) whose remains date back to the 7th century. The church became a parish in 1803.
The old Saint-André collegiate church dates from the 12th century.
It is located in Chartres in the French department of Eure-et-Loir
and was classified as a historical monument on the 1840 list. The
primitive church was built, according to tradition by Saint Aignan,
on the site of a Gallo-Roman amphitheater of which we find vestiges
in the walls of one of the crypts. A second building dating from the
tenth century was destroyed by fire in 1134, leaving only the
crypts.
Rebuilt, the Saint-André church was completed in the
second half of the 12th century. At the beginning of the following
century, an arch was launched over the Eure to support the choir of
the building. This will be rebuilt in the sixteenth century by Jehan
de Beauce. In the seventeenth century, a second arch was built in
the extension of the first, spanning the rue du Massacre to support
the chapel of the Virgin, thus creating a very beautiful ensemble,
which also includes a canonical cloister, a Hôtel-Dieu and
cemeteries. .
The Revolution closed the Saint-André church to
worship in 1791. Its octagonal spire was demolished; the painting on
the high altar representing the martyrdom of Saint André by
Sébastien Bourdon was assigned by the consular government in 1803 to
the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse. It became a fodder store until
1861.
In 1805, the chapel of the Virgin installed on the
second arch collapsed, forcing, for safety reasons, to demolish the
choir in 1827. In 1861, the building was seriously damaged by a
first fire, then by a second in 1944. In 1905, the building housed a
carpentry workshop.
Thanks to an integral restoration started in 2003, the collegiate church and its crypts find their new vocation, that of places of cultural activities now combining a quality framework with cutting-edge equipment. It is around the Saint-André church, in this populated and laborious district, that the Saint-André fair was born and developed in the Middle Ages. It still exists today, even if its location is different.