Every design for Chartres

Chartres takes its name from the Carnutes, the Gaulish tribe in whose territory, Caesar wrote, the druids of all Gaul gathered every year in the middle of a great forest. In Gallo-Roman times the town was Autricum, named after the river Autura, today's Eure. It went on to become the leading town of the Beauce, was raided by the Norsemen in 858, fell to the English in 1417 and, in 1594, saw the coronation of Henry IV, the only king of France not crowned at Reims.

What makes Chartres unique, though, is the Cathédrale Notre-Dame. Mostly built between 1193 and 1250, it has come down to us in an exceptional state: most of the original stained glass is still in place, and the architecture has barely changed since the early thirteenth century. It nearly did not survive. In August 1944 an American officer, Colonel Welborn Barton Griffith, Jr., questioned the order to destroy it and went behind enemy lines to see whether the Germans were using it as an observation post. Around it, the Centre international du vitrail, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Chartres and the Maison Picassiette carry the story on.

If Chartres is your town, you probably stopped looking up at the cathedral years ago. Wearing its streets is a way of seeing them again.