Launched more than 10 years ago, the Cité du Vitrail opens on December 15 in Troyes. Unknown homeland of glass art, the Aube department is committed to dusting off the image of ancestral know-how.
While Chartres imposes itself in the art of stained glass, Troyes carves out a place for itself in the truncated history of this technique. After the Thirty Years’ War, some 120 churches were rebuilt and 431 restored in the Aube. A golden age of stained glass was dawning. Result: more than 80% of the municipalities in the department retain the stained glass windows. To enhance this glass heritage, the project for a dedicated city was born on Thursday 15 December, born after several successful exhibitions in the 2000s. Located in the former Hôtel-Dieu de Troyes, the Cité, unique of its kind in France, oscillates between a national mission to dust off a know-how that attracts the biggest contemporary names and the promotion of a local tradition.
A 16 million euro renovation
« This city is not an end in itselfwarns Valéry Denis, assistant for culture and heritage in the Aube department. It is the flagship of all the glass heritage of the department for which we have developed an application that lists the churches with stained glass windows “. The ruling makes sense in the policy of an institution supported by the general council which has injected around 94% of the 16 million euros needed for the rehabilitation of the building and the opening of the museum. Guided by the architecture of the place, the journey begins in the attic spaces to unfold a technical discourse and a chronological frieze of stained glass.Reconstruction of a master glassmaker’s workshop, exhibition of working tools, panels…
