SAINTE CHAPELLE, Interior

The "real" Sainte-Chapelle isn't on the ground floor, but is the wonder that awaits you on the upper floor, which was once reserved for the royal court and a few other privileged persons.

The architect Pierre de Montreuil, who is believed to have almost certainly designed the chapel, had the ingenious idea of inserting metal reinforcements into the masonry walls that made it possible for them to be thinner and very much like a slim and elegant frame around the multicolored windows. Thus the building loses its consistency, and looks like pure architecture of light: transparent and immaterial.

But now you should immerse yourself in the over 1100 window panes that decorate the interior space with thousands of fairy-tale colors. The themes of the windows are the episodes of the Old Testament and are mostly focused on the kings of ancient Israel, thereby prefiguring and religiously legitimizing the sacred throne of the French monarchy. The statues of the kings of the Bible that are in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame also follow the same logic. In the first window on the right you can follow the history of the relics that are conserved in the chapel....