Chartres Cathedral

The cathedral of Notre-Dame de Chartres, in central France, is the textbook of classic Gothic: it went back up in only 26 years after a fire, so nearly all of it is the same date and the same style. Two mismatched towers (one twelfth-century Romanesque, the other sixteenth-century Flamboyant Gothic), three sculpted doorways, the labyrinth in the floor of the nave and, above all, 176 original thirteenth-century windows, the famous Chartres blue among them. It is one of the best preserved cathedrals in Europe. UNESCO World Heritage.