The Sainte Chapelle

Originating from the desire of Saint Louis to provide a bejewelled casket worthy of housing his collection of relics, the Sainte Chapelle offers the visitor the splendour of its stained glass windows, "this glass curtain, this ardent confession made of pulverized colours and luminous points that have less value as stories than as a simultaneous hymn and a permanent explosion [...] These panels of coloured glass around us are matter that feels, abstract matter, sensitive to the intellectual ray [...] Here is Paradise regained" (Paul Claudel, The Eye Listens).