Our visit to Sainte-Chapelle was as striking today as when we first saw it. The columns of stained glass that encircle the chapel are a feast for the eyes. The windows in the Gothic style chapel depict 1,113 scenes from the Bible.
King Louis IX (St. Louis) built Sainte Chapelle (“Holy Chapel”) on palace grounds between 1243 and 1248 specifically to house the Holy relics he purchased, in particular the Crown of Thornes.
Turns out, Baldwin II, the emperor of Constantinople in 1239, was broke and needed cash so he sold the Crown to St. King Louis. The Crown stayed there until the French revolution when it was removed for safety. Since then, the Crown resided at Notre Dame Cathedral until it burned in 2019. Fortunately, Father Jean-Marc Fournier, the Paris Fire Department chaplain, rescued it from destruction.
I had an incident trying to get into Sainte Chapelle. I had to put my stuff through an x-ray machine and walk through a metal detector like the airport. I wear this thing called a neck wallet which hangs around my neck and under my shirt.
As I tried to take the neck wallet off my body, it somehow got caught around my arm in such a way that I had to take off my shirt completely–all while people were standing in line behind me. The man sitting on the other side of the metal detector seemed preturbed that I was shirtless. Rebecca waited for me patiently.