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Hotel Class: 
3 Stars - 51 Opinions
6-8 av. Jehan-de-Beauce, Chartres, Loire Valley, 28000, France
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of people enjoy staying here
51 Opinions
Cathedral from the Eure River walkway
Twins at door of Chartres Cathedral, France
statue, Cathedral of Chartres, Chartres FR 2000
Saint Aignan
Is there a bus service from Chartres to Tours.
What is cost and where do you depart from
Have a look on :
http://www.transbeauce.fr
specifically the timetable for Chartres - Tours Line 3 :
http://www.transbeauce.fr/ftp/FR_lignes/L3_bat5_Rent.pdf
No idea of cost unless you find it on web. Looks like buses depart from in front of the railway station at Chartres. But other stops in Chartres as well. Look at timetable.
Trying to interpret the Train timetable shown on the TER Central pages and looking at the Map on this page:
http://www.ter-sncf.com/Regions/centre/Fr/Se_deplacer_en_TER/Avant_mon_voyage/Plan_de_ligne/CarteFlash.aspx
It seems that going by bus and train may be suitable - for example looking at this timetable for Paris-Chartres-Vendome-Tours :::
http://telechargement.ter-sncf.com/Images/Centre/Tridion/FW26-E10_tcm-17-16043_20100812_1246.pdf
You can take a bus from Chartres to Chateaudun (as example) at 10.55 (Monday to Saturday) and arrive at Chateaudun at 11.48 the take the train (Mon-Fri) leaving Chateaudun at 11.58 to arrive at Tours at 13.44 (SCNF - train station)
But best to check locally and another study of the timetables essential ! It seems like perhaps a through bus to Tours may be possible or a combination of bus and train?
The Cathedral of our Lady is a place of great wealth. As you drive into the town from Paris end, or Versailles as in my case, you could see the church in its majesty. I stop the car to take a shot of this first view.
It is a high place of chritianity, an important pilgrimage centre and also a cultural artistic and historical monument. The size of the church, and the stained glass.
We visited Chartres cathedral on Assumption Day. Before the ceremony a Black Madonna was carried in and reverantly set upon a throne. The parishners each visited the Madonna with either a touch or a prayer. I'm not sure if this was the statue from 13th century that was taken from its resting place in the underground crypt or if its the statue from 1856.
The story is told that the Christian missionaries first coming to the area of Chartres found the indigenous peoples worshipping a statue of a woman giving birth. The missionaries concluded this was a "pre-figuration" of the Virgin Mary and that the people were already Christians — they just didn't know it. A sanctuary was built around the original mother statue. She continued as the center piece of each succeeding church including the present cathedral built in the 1100's. During the French revolution a statue was deliberately destroyed and in 1856 a dark wooden sculpture was created to replace it.
Many images of the Black Madonna still exist today, mostly in Europe, and France has at least half of them. Most of the Black Madonnas are found in churches, chapels and sanctuaries. A few are in museums. Most are sculpted, usually out of wood, sometimes from stone and one was cast in lead. Some were destroyed, some have disappeared or are in private collections, a few have been lightened or repainted and are no longer black. Sometimes an ancient Black Virgin is destroyed and replaced by another. I had read that the Black Madonnas were made of black walnut and the already dark wood aged even darker over centuries - is this true? I don't know, but it was exciting to see the Madonna and her ceremonial entrance.
How can the center of a city of 40K+ population be "off the beaten Path"? Only if 99.9% of visitors are day-trippers from Paris intent on only "seeing" the most famous Gothic Cathedral in the world. But given the lack of subcategories for Chartres, we must put our other Chartres experiences here or they will be lost with time. Our Intro explains why we stay in Chartres and our pictures illustrate why we like it. This is where we parked our car (just opposite the Hotel Grand Monarque, where we stayed-See Tip), in the Pl. des Epars. The G.M. Hotel show its 18C facade in the background. (I have lost my notes and do not know to whom this statue is dedicated.). It is an easy walk from here to the Cathedral. In fact, other than the pronounced ups and downs in places, Chartres is an easy walk , being about 3km in circumference and about 1 km in diameter.
Just 15 km from the center of Chartres is this town of 160 persons. In the "town" is a 15C wooden church whose walls are decorated with finely drawn figures illustrating that nobody can escape the Black Death or extrapolated that we all must die sometime. This visit is only possible for independent travellers who have their own vehicle (owned or rented) and was a dividend for us from carefully planning our trips back in the old days before the Internet and by looking at every guidebook we could find, etc. This remarkable place showed up in a Michelin guide. It is a must see for anyone driving South to or from Chartres. The illustration of the Danse Macabre is found very infrequently, many have been destroyed by war and time. We add under Chartres>Customs what we know about the Danse and also information on the Encounter of the 3 Living with the 3 Dead, also illustrated on the church walls (in the same place)
It is called the Center Vitrail and it is housed in a beautiful old grange building to the north of the cathedral. There are numerous displays on stained glass, old and new, how it is made and how it is restored. There are people on the premises that are actively working with stained glass. You get to see several pieces that have been restored.
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Q: getting to Chartres from Normandy "What would be the best way to get from Bayeux in Normandy to Chartres? Or alternatively from Mont St. Michel in Normandy to..."
A: "There is a train service from Bayeux to Chartres. You do appear to have to go to Paris and change there. That makes it less than direct and it will be about a 4-hour trip..."
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Address: 6-8 av. Jehan-de-Beauce, Chartres, Loire Valley, 28000, France
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