The winding old town of Troyes, characterized by half-timbered houses, gives an idea of ​​an eventful history.

It gains contours above all in view of its Gothic cathedral Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul and its churches, which are also medieval or renovated at the transition to the Renaissance.

The religious buildings of the Champagne city, one hundred and fifty kilometers south-east of Paris, are known for their architecture, sculpture and stained glass – and for showing the changing ages.

Thus, in just a few adjacent windows in the choir of Sainte-Madeleine, one can trace the remarkable formal leaps made by the stained-glass painters at the turn of the fifteenth century and the early sixteenth.

But despite individual innovations, their luminosity, which is primarily caused by red, blue and yellow tones, and their strong sequencing of individual scenes, framed by decorative elements, still dominate here.

On the other hand, windows in the side aisles of Saint-Pantaléon from the 1530s tell of a clear reorientation.

Color has now largely given way to subtle grisaille and a large-scale, no longer small-scale narrative that goes back to Cisalpine inspiration.

This period of upheaval around 1500 is part of the city's heyday.

The trade routes between Burgundy and Flanders, Paris and Alsace or Provence, but also Italy once crossed in Troyes – and with them artistic innovations.

At that time, these were also conveyed through a neighboring interface, through the construction site of Fontainebleau Castle, only about a hundred kilometers away, which under François I decided to focus on Italian artists and their new spirit.

Leonardo's patron Franz I also relied on glass from Troyes

Now, just before Christmas, the Cité du Vitrail was opened in Troyes, a center for glass painting that sees itself as an exhibition house as well as a documentation and research center with a library.

He is just as concerned with sacred as with profane, with old as well as modern and contemporary stained glass and with imparting knowledge about the creation and restoration.

It is housed in the Hôtel-Dieu-le-Comte, a former hospital that replaced previous buildings when it was built in the eighteenth century like a hôtel particulier "between courtyard and garden".

His wrought-iron entrance portal from 1760 on the Rue de la Cité, which connects the old town and the cathedral, is better known than the U-shaped building itself.

But this one, which was specially prepared for its new function during its recent renovation, is quite impressive;

Apart from a wing used by the University of Reims as a branch, it also includes the hospital pharmacy (“Apothicairerie”), which has always been popular with visitors to the city, and a stately chapel.

The permanent exhibition of the Cité du Vitrail is now installed here and on several floors.

A good fifty originals of various formats, from fragments and smaller panes to stained-glass windows of stately proportions, are incorporated into a tour that also includes the reconstruction of a historic stained glass studio.

Loans complete the still small own collection, the highlight of which is a restored "Transfiguration of Christ" dated to the twelfth century.