Sainte Chapelle and the Conciergerie

November 20, 2017

We had a fun weekend, which included a tour of Sainte Chapelle and the Conciergerie.  Visits to both places dovetailed nicely with my current study of the history of Paris, mostly through reading Alistair Horne's The Seven Ages of Paris.  

The Conciergerie, originally built as a support location for the royal activities nearby was transformed into a prison during the French Revolution.  We saw vestiges of both of its uses during our tour, including huge fireplaces to cook food for the royal banquets and cells for political prisoners.  It was here that Marie Antoinette was imprisoned during the revolution.  Our guide, the same gentleman who conducted our tour of Notre Dame, gave us some interesting history about how the executions of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI were not inevitable given the revolution but rather the result of prejudices against Marie Antoinette's cultural differences with the French and Louis XVI's sheer cluelessness.  He also talked about the French ambivalence (existing to this day, he claims) about royalty, and the horrors of the Reign of Terror immediately following the revolution.  The building itself contained few indications of its uses over the ages but was quite attractive architecturally.  I especially loved the stone staircase pictured on the left above, leading upstairs from the kitchens.  

We continued on to Sainte Chapelle (the Holy Chapel), one of the finest examples of gothic architecture in the world, a true gem.  It was built by Louis IX to house the passion relics that we acquired during his reign.  In particular, he wanted a special and fitting home for the crown of thorns, which he acquired from Constantinople via Venice when Constantinople was unable to pay its debts to Venetian bankers.  The crown of thorns was housed in a large gold box.  The box is long since gone, but the crown has since moved to Notre Dame, where one can see it on the first Friday of every month.  (Two funny things about our tour guide:  First, he is German, and kept referring to all the Louises as "Ludwig."  I hope everyone else caught on.  Second, he repeated the classic Mark Twain joke about relics, something about all of the "true crowns of thorns" wrapping around Jesus' head dozens of times and pieces of all of the "true cross" being reassembled into a cross 30 meters long.)

Sainte Chapelle is, of course, very beautiful.  It is not called a "gem of gothic architecture" for nothing.  These photos may give you some idea, but they fail to do it justice, especially the windows.