Stained-glass windows and France's gothic churches

The Earful Tower: Paris

Oliver Gee

Arts, Paris, Society & Culture, Travel, Places & Travel, France

4.8 • 749 Ratings

🗓️ 3 February 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It's time for a day of stained glass windows and gothic churches, featuring a visit to three key churches and cathedrals.

We begin this day trip with Chartres, a little town to the south west of Paris. Trusty tour guide Bertrand d’Aleman, from award-winning travel company My Private Paris, explains how we're in the midst of a gothic church (and stained glass window) revival.

We took the train to Chartres, then spent half a day exploring the cathedral and the town. Then we headed back to Paris for a skip-the-line look at Sainte Chapelle and lastly Notre Dame.

My Private Paris is a local deluxe agency, crafting itineraries for tours in Paris and beyond (including, of course, Champagne). See what they offer here. Here is their full-day trip to Chartres, though this particular excursion was unique to us.

Music: Pres Maxson.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello, everybody listening to the Eiffel Tower podcast.
0:02.9	My name's Oliver G.
0:04.1	And there are whispers going around that there is a Gothic church stained glass window
0:10.9	renaissance revival going on.
0:14.4	And in this episode, you're going to hear me with Bertrand d'Almond from my private Paris,
0:19.9	visiting some of the best stained glass window churches
0:22.9	in the universe? Is that fair, Bertrand? Of course it is fair. In the whole universe. Now,
0:29.7	the idea today, we're sitting, I mean, let's set the scene, you and I are sitting in the middle
0:33.9	of the Chart Cathedral. You seem kind of excited about this.
0:38.4	I think we're in your favorite kind of territory here.
0:41.0	Tell me what you mean by this revival that's going on.
0:44.8	And are you exaggerated?
0:47.2	This, I mean, we are living a moment that I think will be given a name in art history at some point.
0:55.7	It's great, we call it revival of the Gothic architecture.
1:00.0	We have hundreds of Gothic churches and cathedral in France,
1:05.6	and by the dozens they are being restored at the moment.
1:08.9	Of course, Notre Dame is taking all the headlines,
1:13.3	but it's not just Notre Dame, it's also all over the country. And here in Chart,
1:19.8	the work is just magic. So, if I may paraphrase, we're talking about 800 to 600-year- old buildings that were built in this beautiful Gothic style, which I'll get you to define in a second.
1:33.5	And then because they all needed this renovation, and because of Notre Dame, it's all sort of happening at once and people are flocking to see these stained glass windows and everything.
1:43.2	That's essentially it, right?
1:45.0	But can you explain, like I ask you this on the train here, Gothic architecture. Can you explain
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Oliver Gee, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Oliver Gee and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.