Photo : Gerda Arendt / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)
Sainte-Chapelle
The Sainte-Chapelle, also called Sainte-Chapelle du Palais, is a chapel built on the Île de la Cité, in Paris, at the request of Saint Louis to house the Crown of Thorns, a piece of the True Cross, and various other relics of the Passion that he had acquired from 1239. With the Conciergerie, it is one of the former remains of the Palais de la Cité that extended over the site covering the present Palais de Justice. Some exterior and interior decoration, destroyed at the Revolution, is modern. The Sainte-Chapelle is managed by the Centre des monuments nationaux, to which it was assigned as an endowment by an order of 2 April 2008. Served by the Cité metro station, the monument welcomes on average some 800,000 visitors of more than 40 nationalities each year, making it the third most visited monument managed by the Centre des monuments nationaux after Mont-Saint-Michel and the Arc de Triomphe.
