Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres

Chartres

A Gothic masterpiece of the 12th and 13th centuries, famed for its stone labyrinth and stained glass. Its crypt holds the Well of the Strong Saints (puits des Saints-Forts), given as 33 to 35 metres deep depending on the source, and said to have been dug in Gallo-Roman times within the walls of the Carnute oppidum of Autricum — sources themselves hedge with 'probably.' Chartres' clergy had it filled in during the mid-17th century, uneasy about the superstitions attached to it; it was cleared out in 1900–1901 by Eure-et-Loir archivist René Merlet, and the niche visible today dates from 1903, the year of a restoration funded by public subscription. The tradition of a druidic sanctuary devoted to a 'Virgin who was to give birth' goes back to a sermon by Jean de Gerson around 1420, later popularised in the 17th century by Sébastien Roulliard; the cathedral's own historians regard it as a late-medieval invention, and the exact location of the Gaulish oppidum itself remains poorly known even today. A genuine Gallo-Roman sanctuary has indeed been excavated in Chartres since 2005 — but at Saint-Martin-au-Val, a kilometre away, with nothing to connect it to the cathedral. None of which stops geobiology practitioners from ranking Chartres first among France's 'cosmo-telluric high places.'

Getting there : Free entry

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound