Sainte Chapelle

My absolute favorite church that Ive been to is Sainte Chapelle, located on Île de la Cité in the heart of Paris. The church isn’t very big nor grand from the outside, but the beauty is all in the details. Its quite interesting really. There are five different colors; red, yellow, green, blue and purple. They first make a template with paper then cut the glass to the specification of the template. From there, they piece together the square sections with lead and use steel rods to keep the glass from collapsing upon themselves. In order to create the faces and shadows they apply a mixture of iron and vinegar to paint the glass then bake it in. Each section contains over a hundred pieces of glass and there are hundreds of sections. The imagery goes around the room depicting various stories from the bible. What makes Sainte Chapelle so magically to me is the way that the sun shines through the colored glass reflecting all around the room. I walked from one end of the church to the other with my eye on the sun and it was as though I’ve disembarked on a dream where seemly hundreds of colors were dancing and swaying about and I was a lucky witness to this beauty. I apologize but the photos don’t even begin to do this place justice.