Chartres: The Blue Glass of Notre-Dame, the Labyrinth and the Maison Picassiette

Required Activities

• Find the two sets of glass that came through the 1194 fire — the three bays above the west portal, the oldest in the building, and Notre-Dame de la Belle Verrière, rescued and reset in the ambulatory — then look for the gaps in the choir where the canons smashed a dozen windows in 1757 because they wanted more light, and finish at the new windows the Korean artist Bang Hai Ja made for the lower Saint-Piat chapel in 2022

• On a Friday between Lent and All Saints, when the chairs come off the nave floor, walk the labyrinth right to its centre and back out again — the way it was meant to be done — then follow the line facing you up towards the choir and the altar, and see how the west rose lands exactly on the labyrinth when you project it onto the paving

• At the Maison Picassiette, find the Palestinian woman to the left of the front door and her pendant the Frenchwoman on the right, then the mosaic of the cathedral, the chapel and summer lodging Isidore built between 1953 and 1956, the cour noire, and in the garden the tomb of the Spirit he finished in 1962 — two years before he died. He had been the town's roadmender and then the cemetery sweeper, and picked the plates out of the local tips himself

• After dark, walk the Chartres en Lumières circuit and count how many of its twenty-four lit sites you can find in one evening, starting with the projections on the cathedral's west front

• Walk the outside of the choir screen and work your way through its forty carved groups — two hundred figures in all — picking out the scenes you can name before you reach the end