Chartres

Chartres is built on a hill above the left bank of the Eure, its cathedral's two spires visible across the Beauce plain, long the granary of France. The Gothic cathedral of Notre-Dame was begun after the fire of 1194 destroyed the Romanesque church, and its construction took about sixty years. Pilgrims came to venerate the Sancta Camisa, the tunic said to have been worn by the Virgin, and the cathedral kept most of its original stained glass. The county of Chartres belonged to the counts of Blois and Champagne and later to the Châtillon family, who sold it to the crown in 1286.

In April 1360 a hailstorm struck Edward III's English army near Chartres, and the Treaty of Brétigny, signed in May at a hamlet near the town, ended the first phase of the Hundred Years' War. In 1506 lightning destroyed the cathedral's north spire, and the architect Jehan de Beauce rebuilt it in Flamboyant style. Henry IV's troops captured the town from the Catholic League in April 1591. Because Reims was in League hands, Henry IV was crowned in Chartres cathedral on 27 February 1594.