Stained Glass at Sainte Chapelle

By: Emma Galvin

Hello! This is my first official post from Paris. I’ve been here since Saturday and it’s been an amazing experience. So far on this trip I’ve toured Musee de Cluny, the Latin Quarter, Ile de la Cite (where Notre Dame is) and Ile St Louis, but my favorite place I’ve gone to so far would be Sainte Chapelle. The first floor was beautiful with its navy blue ceiling and gilded gothic archways, but the real beauty of the chapel was on the second level where the King would hold his personal services. All of the walls were covered in stained glass windows that were illuminated by chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. I’ve always loved stained glass because it makes a space beautiful and colorful and would often tell a story. My grandfather used to make stained glass art pieces when I was younger and every summer I would go to his house and help him make stained glass art pieces. It took the whole week I was visiting to pick out the glass, cut it into shapes, grind it down, and then finally solder it together and that was with modern tools. I don’t know much about medieval stained glass making, but I don’t know whether they had advanced technologies to make the windows or not. It was still a painstakingly long process to make all those pieces, solder them together with lead, and put them up around the walls of the chapel. What I worked on with my grandfather was simple, small pieces and I can’t imagine the level of planning it took to convey the stories they wanted to on the windows or even how they assembled and got them into the chapel in the first place.

Making these art pieces was something we got to do together and I always had a fun time learning how. I would take the stained glass home with me and would hang them in the windows of my bedroom. It wasn”t as magnificent as Sainte Chappelle but I loved waking up and getting to look at the art my grandfather and I worked on together.

Pictured below is a picture I took of the stained glass covering the walls of Sainte Chappelle and a photo of one of the pieces I helped my grandfather make.