As Paris claims the world's attention during the Olympic games, this program explores the city's role as the most important center of royal power, intellectual life, architectural innovation, and artistic productivity in medieval Western Europe. We will examine the key twelfth- and thirteenth-century churches that survive there – the abbey church of St-Denis, the cathedral of Notre-Dame, and the royal chapel known as the Sainte-Chapelle – as conglomerations of architecture, sculpture, painting, stained glass, and interior furnishings that give insights into the intellectual, political, and religious concerns of their time. We will also turn to the world of expert artisans at the royal court and in the city's neighborhoods – ivory carvers, embroiderers, goldsmiths, and manuscript painters – who established Paris's status as the European capital of style and taste.