Quick Facts about Chartres Cathedral
→ Date of UNESCO inscription: 1979
→ Length: 130 meters
→ Width: 32 meters
→ Height of nave: 37 meters
→ Width of nave: 16.4 meters
→ Height of NW tower: 113 meters
→ Height of SW tower: 105 meters
People sometimes think of Gothic architecture as dark and sombre, but that is not the way that the original architects and masons saw their work.
Cathedrals were originally intended as a way of gaining a glimpse of paradise on earth. They were designed to be ethereal buildings, temples of light.
Chartres Cathedral is already unique in several ways. It was completed in just 30 years.
Unlike most other cathedrals, it has never been extensively rebuilt, and has retained 80 per cent of its original stained glass.
It emerged in 1989 that, unlike any other Gothic cathedral, the original medieval internal décor had been preserved beneath layers of 19th-century white-wash and grime.