La Sainte-Chapelle, visit with Rosemary Flannery

It’s raining outside 🙏 (Hallelujah! we need it). The birds are singing like mad.

Yesterday Rosemary Flannery had a spare ticket for Sainte-Chapelle and invited me to join her.

This is Paris tour guide, Rosemary of Angels of Paris fame - a lovely gift book if you’re mad for Parisian architecture + angels 👼 …who isn’t?

Never pass up a chance to visit this glorious stained-glass heaven, especially with a French history & art expert.

I learned more about king Louis IX, (builder of Sainte-Chapelle in a mere 7 years and shown here in his polychrome faded glory)than any normal person needs to know.

In a nutshell this handy Reddit diagram tells all.

We are in the downstairs portico where the hoi-poloi were allowed. It’s nice to be with someone who knows the names of the botanical leaves on the column capitals - these are oak. The carved leaves vary on each capitol. 

We go up the almost hidden, steep, tiny circular staircase 

Et voila! King Louis’ floor. He had his own private entrance and even a small window 🪟  so he could check to see who was there.

My last visit to Sainte-Chapelle was in 2015 when I was making the rounds of as many French Gothic cathedrals as possible (Saint Denis, Chartres, Amiens, Notre Dame etc.). 

I was so enthralled at the time I was ready to join a convent (I’m not even Catholic). That’s how I know I’m ADD - impulsive and easily distracted 😵‍💫

Back to the present, Rosemary was looking for sculpted birds 🐦 amongst the vine leaves she’d read about. Look at these angels! Each one is different. There is much to see besides stained glass.

 Sainte-Chapelle construction began after 1238. The chapel was consecrated in April 1248. 

FYI there are 15 stained glass windows 15m high - the stained glass windows of the 1113 scenes of the Old and New Testaments. 

Its purpose was to house King Louis’ precious religious relics brought back from the Crusades, including the Crown of thorns given to him by Latin Emperor Baldwin II of Constantinople in 1238. It’s in the Louvre since the 2019 fire in Notre Dame.

Where is Sainte-Chapelle? At 10, boulevard du Palais on the Ile de la Cité in the middle of the Seine. It opens at 9 am. We got there at 4 pm thinking…it’s a weekday..it can’t be crowded. 

Ha! So many Easter tourists in town and most of them at Sainte-Chapelle. It is the 3rd most visited Paris monument after the Eiffel Tower and l’Arc de Triomphe (since Notre Dame is out of the running). But it didn’t matter in the end. Still a wondrous experience, though do 👍 get your tickets online in advance. 

And take in a concert there by all means. 

After our visit we walked up to Cova at Pont Neuf for a panini.

Then I came home and painted more macarons & Pavlovas. Please share & do visit Parisbreakfast letters 💌 and watercolors on Etsy.          

                         ☔️ ☔️ Bon Mercredi Pbers ☔️ ☔️