Why the chapel exists
Louis IX, the Crown of Thorns and Sainte-Chapelle
The chapel was built to hold one relic. What Louis IX paid for it, and where the Crown of Thorns is kept today.
Check tour dates on Viator ↗A purchase from Constantinople
In 1239 Louis IX bought the Crown of Thorns from Baldwin II, the Latin Emperor at Constantinople, for 135,000 livres. Further relics, including fragments of the True Cross, were added during the 1240s.
A reliquary that cost more than the building
The chapel itself cost around 40,000 livres to build and glaze. The Grand-Châsse, the silver and gilded-copper reliquary made to display the relics, cost roughly 100,000 livres on its own.
Modelled on an emperor's chapel
The two-storey palace chapel has obvious similarities to Charlemagne's palatine chapel at Aachen, built between 782 and 805 — a royal building in a line of royal buildings.
What the Revolution did to the relics
The Grand-Châsse was dismantled and its precious metal melted down during the French Revolution. The Crown of Thorns itself survived and passed to Notre-Dame's treasury after the 1801 Concordat.
Where it is now
The Crown of Thorns survived the 2019 Notre-Dame fire and returned to the rebuilt cathedral on 13 December 2024, where it is kept rather than at Sainte-Chapelle, which no longer holds the relic it was built for.