Vitraux de la cathédrale St-Étienne de Bourges [1]

French-language Wikipédia says:

« La cathédrale de Bourges ne possède pas un ensemble de vitraux du XIIe et XIIIe siècles équivalent à celui de la cathédrale de Chartres, mais elle possède des vitraux du XIIIe jusqu'au XVIIe siècle permettant de voir l'évolution de cet art. Les vitraux de la cathédrale de Bourges sont en partie faits au XIIIe siècle. Au XVIe siècle furent ajoutés
de nouveaux vitraux réalisés par l'artiste berruyer Jean Lecuyer. »

I took a lot of photos of stained glass windows that June day in 2008 when CHM and I walked around inside the church. It was a beautiful day, bright and sunny, so the light was good. I don't know much about individual windows,
so I'm just posting enlargeable photos of the windows in the order in which I took them.

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Bourges et sa cathédrale

The first time Walt and I ever saw the cathedral at Bourges was in 1993. We had just spent two weeks in Provence and we were driving back to Paris. For some reason, we cut across the middle of France from Mâcon, I think, northwest toward Bourges. We came into the town from the south, then, and were stunned to be confronted with such a magnificent church! It was more than impressive; it was almost overwhelming. Neither of us was aware of its existence before we stumbled upon it. The last photo in this post shows it as we saw it that first time.

On another trip, in 2019, we drove past Bourges on our way home from a stay in Auvergne and I snapped the photo below from the window of the car. You can see how Bourges cathedral dominates the fairly flat Berry landscape.

I've been to Bourges a few times now, but the most memorable visit was in 2009 with CHM. It was a year to the day before we went to the Château de Meillant, just a few miles south. I don't remember if CHM had been to Bourges before. We had a great lunch in a restaurant near the cathedral and spent a few hours taking photos all around the building as well as inside. Here are some of the exterior shots. In  photo #1 below, the small crowd of people in front of the cathedral might give you an idea of the scale of the place.

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Here's one of the best views of the Cathédrale Saint-Étienne de Bourges. As far as the west front goes, nearby buildings make it hard to get a good photo. The cathedral was built starting in  the year 1195. It was consacrated in 1324. The Cadogan Loire guidebook says it is "just as large and grand as Notre-Dame" in Paris.

Meillant : la Tour du Lion, etc.

The large photo just below is a long-zoom shot that CHM took when we were at Meillant in June 2009. He and I were both using Panasonic Lumix TZ3 cameras. The two smaller photos, #1 and #2, are ones I took. You can sort of see the lion at the top of the tower in both of them. La Tour du Lion at the Château de Meillant was built in the early years of the 16th century by Charles II d'Amboise, in the Louis XII style.

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Photo #3 above shows the part of the château that was built earlier, when there was a moat all around the complex. Photo #4 is a gargoyle. I've rotated it 90º to the left so that the winged dog is looking to the right rather than down at the ground. And finally, the last photo is a drawing of what the château supposedly looked like in 1510 (thanks to Wikipedia — the photo is in the public domain).

Le Château de Meillant: carvings and statues

Here's a short slideshow made up of photos I took at the Château de Meillant near Bourges in central France. The stone carvings and statues on the exterior walls of the château are elaborate and varied. See my previous post for photos of the château itself.