Chartres Cathedral Celebrates 1,000 Years of Its Foundation

If Notre Dame de Chartres was France’s first cathedral to be listed as a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1979, it is primarily because it is considered the most complete and best-preserved of the country’s Gothic cathedrals and has made a major contribution to the export of this architectural art worldwide.  

The technical prowess that enabled the monument to unfold 371 feet in height — and to adorn itself with almost 4,000 sculptures and 2,600 square meters of stained glass in barely two centuries — led the famous 19th-century architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc to exclaim: “There’s no cathedral after Chartres!”