La Sainte-Chapelle

La Sainte-Chapelle (English: The Holy Chapel) is a Gothic chapel on the Île de la Cité in the heart of Paris, France. It is perhaps the high point of the full tide of the rayonnante period of Gothic architecture.

The Sainte-Chapelle, the palatine chapel in the courtyard of the royal palace on the Île de la Cité, was built to house precious relics: Christ's crown of thorns, the Image of Edessa and thirty other relics of Christ that had been in the possession of Louis IX since August 1239, when it arrived from Venice in the hands of two Dominican friars. Unlike many devout aristocrats, who swiped relics, the saintly Louis bought his precious relics of the Passion, purchased from the Latin emperor at Constantinople, Baldwin II, for the exorbitant sum of 135,000 livres, which was paid to the Venetians, to whom it had been pawned. The entire chapel, by contrast, cost 40,000 livres to build and until it was complete the relics were housed at chapels at the Château de Vincennes and a specially-built chapel at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. In 1241 a piece of the True Cross was added, and other relics. Thus the building in Paris, consecrated 26 April 1248, was like a precious reliquary: even the stonework was painted, with medallions of saints and martyrs in the quatrefoils of the dado arcade, which was hung with rich textiles.

Much of the chapel as it appears today is a recreation, although nearly two-thirds of the windows are authentic. The chapel suffered its most grievous destruction in the late eighteenth century, during theFrench Revolution, when the steeple and baldachin were removed, the relics dispersed (though some survive as the "relics of Sainte-Chapelle" at Notre Dame de Paris), and various reliquaries, including the grande châsse, were melted down. The Sainte-Chapelle was requisitioned as an archival depository in 1803. Two meters' worth of glass was removed to facilitate working light, and destroyed or loosed upon the market. Its well-documented restoration, completed under the direction ofEugène Viollet-le-Duc in 1855, was regarded as exemplary by contemporaries and is faithful to the original drawings and descriptions of the chapel that survive.