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![[Flag]](../images/f/fr-28-ch.gif)
Flag of Chartres - Image by Olivier Touzeau, 25 October 2025
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Chartres (37,990 inhabitants, 1,685 ha) is a commune and the prefecture of the Eure-et-Loir department.
Chartres is famous worldwide for the Chartres Cathedral. Mostly constructed between 1193 and 1250, this Gothic cathedral is in an exceptional state of preservation. The majority of the original stained glass windows are intact, while the architecture has seen only minor changes since the early 13th century.
According to archaeological excavations, the origins of human
settlement date back to prehistory.
Chartres was one of the oppidums
of the Carnutes territory, known as Autricum. During the Gallo-Roman
period, Chartres-Autricum was a large city. It was supplied with water
by two aqueducts, and there was also a large amphitheater, at least
one forum, and temples. Evangelized, according to legends of the
central Middle Ages, in the mid-3rd century by Saint Altin and Saint
Eodald, the city was even informed of the Christian message as early
as the 1st century by the Druids, who are said to have established the
cult of Mary. At the fall of the Roman Empire, Chartres-Autricum was
one of the largest bishoprics in Gaul. However, it was only from the
5th and 6th centuries that we really saw the bishopric functioning and
that the historicity of the bishops could be established.
In 743, the city was captured by Hunald, Duke of Aquitaine, and
burned. In the 9th century, the Normans ravaged the surrounding lands
several times and, in June 858, destroyed the city and probably the
cathedral. The cathedral was rebuilt, while the people of Chartres
erected the first ramparts. In 876, a gift from Charles II the Bald,
the Veil of the Virgin, sparked a major pilgrimage that subsequently
brought wealth to the city and the power of its local religious
institutions. In 911, the Norman leader Rollo, returning from an
expedition to Burgundy, sailed up the Eure and began a siege of the
city. He encountered resistance organized by Bishop ancelme, who
called for help from the Marquis of Neustria, Robert, the Duke of
Burgundy, Richard the Justiciar, and the Count of Poitou, Ebles
Manzer, who defeated Rollo before the city's fortifications on July
20. According to a 12th-century account, the bishop drove off the
enemy by brandishing Mary's shirt, the Veil of the Virgin, a major
relic of the cathedral. This victory, attributed to the intercession
of the Virgin herself, would only increase the influence of the
pilgrimage in the following centuries, which, thanks to donations,
facilitated the financing of the current cathedral. Another source of
this power lay in the wealth of Beauce, where the cathedral chapter
owned large estates. It was from this wealth and power that successive
cathedrals arose. This material splendor was then coupled with a great
intellectual renown. Bishop Fulbert of Chartres was at the origin of
the development of the School of Chartres, which flourished for nearly
two centuries. Alongside famous masters such as Thierry of Chartres
and Bernard of Chartres, Bishop Yves of Chartres was one of the great
canonists of the Church. In the 10th century, the presence of Theobald
I of Blois in his castle changed the distribution of power within the
city. The economic revival centered around river trades, supported by
the count and the bishop, laid the foundations for future urban
development. In the political and military spheres, King Louis VI the
Fat of France, after a long struggle, subdued the Lord of Puiset,
whose power challenged the monarchy.
The quality of the churches attests to the scale of the religious movement and the economic prosperity of the 12th and 13th centuries. The region, in central France and at the heart of the royal domains, suffered the consequences of the Hundred Years' War. It was in Brétigny, a small hamlet south of Chartres, that a treaty marking a truce between the English and King John the Good of France was signed on May 8, 1360. But the era of prosperity experienced a revival, in architectural terms, in the 15th and 16th centuries.
In the 16th century, despite religious unrest, the city of Chartres remained faithful to the Catholic faith. But the fertility of the land and the financial advantages that the city derived from supplying the capital aroused the covetousness of the various Huguenot and Catholic parties. After having been the appanage of Charles of Valois, father of Philip VI, the County of Chartres was elevated to a duchy by Francis I in 1528 for the benefit of Renée de France, Duchess of Ferrara. In 1568, the city was besieged by Louis de Bourbon-Condé, then from February to April 1591, by Henry IV. Despite the city's resistance, he was crowned on February 27, 1594, in Chartres Cathedral: he was the only king of France crowned in this cathedral. In 1626, Louis XIII elevated Chartres to a duchy-peerage for his brother Gaston, a title that fell into disuse in 1660 with his daughter, the Grande Mademoiselle. In 1661, Louis XIV granted the duchy to his brother Philippe, who had become head of the House of Orléans, and whose heir would bear the title of Duke of Chartres until Louis-Philippe. In the 18th century, the city held the title of duchy-peerage and was under the jurisdiction of the Parliament of Paris, the General Government of Orléans, and the Intendancy of Orléans.
During the Revolution, the cathedral was relatively protected, while
several churches in Chartres were sold, demolished, or converted.
During the 19th century, the city's entry into the contemporary world
was marked by significant advances such as the arrival of the railway
with the inauguration of the station in 1849, the introduction of the
tramway in 1899, and the creation, in 1909, among the first in France,
of the airfield, straddling the neighboring town of Champhol, where
several pilots, such as Henri Farman and Latham, achieved fame. This
airfield became Air Base 122 Chartres-Champhol, where a famous flight
school was established during the First World War. Note: The airbase
closed permanently in 1997.
The city benefited from the prosperity of
agricultural trade and expanded its urban boundaries, taking advantage
of the opening of the Paris-Chartres railway line in 1841. The city
walls disappeared, the cathedral square was partially cleared by
moving the hospital, which was rebuilt on the outskirts of the city
between 1857 and 1865, and the theater was equipped with an
Italian-style auditorium, inaugurated in 1861. Starting in 1923, Raoul
Brandon erected an imposing building on the site of the former horse
market, quickly nicknamed "Notre-Dame-des-Postes." The city continued
to suffer in the first half of the 20th century with the bombings of
August 15, 1918, June 1940, and May 1944.
At the beginning of World War II, Jean Moulin, then Prefect of
Eure-et-Loir, had his first run-ins with the troops of the Third Reich
while remaining with the 800 residents who had not participated in the
exodus during the Battle of France on June 15, 1940. He left his post
in November 1940. The Germans set up the Feldkommandantur on Boulevard
Chasles. The French Resistance also organized in Chartres, with the
help of Spanish Republicans such as the resistance fighter Pepita
Carnicer. During the preparatory bombings for the Normandy landings,
the city center was accidentally bombed on May 26, 1944, resulting in
the death of fifty people, the burning of the municipal library, and
the loss of many old books. The cathedral was saved from destruction
on August 16, 1944, thanks to American Colonel Welborn Griffith. He
questioned the order to destroy the cathedral, as his superiors
believed the Germans were sheltering there. He volunteered to go and
check with another volunteer for the presence of German soldiers
inside. Noticing that the cathedral was empty, he rang the bells to
warn of the absence of an enemy. He was killed in action the same day
at Lèves, near Chartres. He was posthumously awarded the Croix de
Guerre with Palm, the Legion of Honor, and the Order of Merit by the
French government, as well as the Distinguished Service Cross by the
American government. From August 16, 1944, reconnaissance missions
carried out in the region by the 3rd Cavalry Group of the US Army led
to the liberation of the city at the cost of heavy fighting conducted
on August 18 by the 5th Infantry Division and the 7th Armored Division
belonging to the XX Corps of the 3rd Army commanded by General George
Patton. On August 23, 1944, on his way to Rambouillet, which he
reached at 6 p.m., and where he was to meet with General Leclerc to
finalize the final details of the liberation of Paris, General de
Gaulle delivered a speech from the steps of the main Post Office in
Chartres: "How moved I am by the magnificent welcome in Chartres,
liberated Chartres! Chartres on the road to Paris, that is to say, on
the road to victory! »
At the Liberation, on August 16, 1944, eleven women had their heads
shaved, including Simone Touseau (1921-1966), who was the subject of a
photograph by Robert Capa entitled La Tondue de Chartres. The photo
was published the following month in the American magazine Life and
then in other newspapers, becoming world-famous. 162 people were
sentenced in Chartres for collaboration, including seven to death,
while 278 were sentenced for national indignity.
While the population
had stagnated at the end of the 19th century, after the Second World
War, there was a new boom, limited by the city's proximity to the
capital. Chartres then underwent a true economic and social
transformation characterized by job creation, population growth, and
the creation of the La Madeleine and Beaulieu (renamed Le Clos)
neighborhoods.
Olivier Touzeau, 25 October 2025
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Representation of the full achievement of the coat of arms (but without )
the Croix de Guerre attached, see:
fomr the municipal website
The Latin motto of Chartres is "Servanti civem querna corona datur," which means "To he who saves a citizen is given an oak crown." This is a tradition from ancient Rome: the oak crown was awarded to any citizen who, on the battlefield, saved the life of one of his fellow citizens. This motto, appearing on the city's coat of arms since the 16th century, was found again at the end of the 18th century on medals bearing the city's coat of arms.
According to Roger Joly, the coat of arms of Chartres dates back to at
least the 1350s.
However, in 1696, Charles René d'Hozier recorded the coat of arms of
Chartres in the General Armorial of France as: "terced per fess of Or,
Argent, and Gules."
During the First Empire, Napoleon granted in 1811 arms with in the
chief a sheaf of wheat Or and the usual napoleonian quarter with the
letter N, but described the inscriptions of the deniers as "indented
of 5 pieces Sable, with three pellets palewise and the plan of a
fortress".
The current drawing of the arms, from 1780 was readopted after the
Empire in 1815.
The arms are blazoned:
Gules, three plates each charged with an inscription Sable as struck
on the obverse of a medieval denier of Blois and Chartres
(bléso-chartrain) type accompanied on the sinister by a fleur-de-lis;
the chief Azure, three fleurs-de-lis Or.
About the inscription on the medieval deniers (source: Société archéologique d'Eure-et-Loir and Association Les Chevaliers Carnutes), after Roger Joly, De quand date la devise de la ville de Chartres, in Bulletin de la Société Archéologique d’Eure-et-Loir, NS 62, 1976, pp145-150:
image adapted from Société archéologique d'Eure-et-Loir
"The interpretation of the bezants is controversial. The bezants simply correspond to a so-called Chartres type currency, although it is found throughout the Loire region. In 1835, the numismatist Lelewel
gave a hypothesis for the interpretation of these figures. The strange inscriptions represented on them would only be the result of the work of clumsy copyists and characteristic of the decadence of arts and
techniques which prevailed during the "barbarian period" which followed the Carolingian Renaissance. It must simply be seen as the representation of a sovereign's profile surmounted by a diadem, representing Louis the Pious, son of Charlemagne (bezant no. 1). The clumsiness of the copyist of bezant no. 2 is at the origin of all this; bezant no. 3 is only a simple 90° rotation of bezant no. 2). We can clearly see that the copyist of bezant No. 4 had absolutely no idea what he was copying and replaced the three bars representing the lips and chin of the face with a fleur-de-lis. Bezant No. 5 is the one found on the arms of Chartres."
In 1950, a decree from the Secretary of State for War awarded the town the Croix de Guerre with silver star for the bravery of its inhabitants during the Second World War.
The current logo of Chartres, adopted in July 2018, consists of a letter C, the initial of the city, integrated into a composition inspired by the stained glass windows of its cathedral, in particular the rose window, with a strong presence of the blue that is specific to them.
Olivier Touzeau, 25 October 2025
At the Chartres racecourse, the flag of Chartres can be observed.
It is
horizontally divided B/R, with a white disk in the center on which is
the full coat of arms: photo (2024), photo (2024), photo (2023), photo (2022), photo (2022), photo (2017).
Olivier Touzeau, 25 October 2025
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