Forms and Settings of the Chapel

A chapel can be almost any scale, from a freestanding royal foundation to a single alcove marked off within a larger building, and its defining feature is functional rather than architectural: it is a space set aside for worship that is not a parish's primary church. Castles, palaces and great houses historically kept private chapels for the household's use, sparing the family a journey to the parish church and giving a ruler direct religious authority within the walls of power. Universities, hospitals, prisons and military bases maintain chapels for communities that need worship space but do not constitute a parish of their own, often serving multiple denominations in rotation or through a shared, deliberately neutral design.

Within a large cathedral or church, side chapels branch off the main nave or ambulatory, each typically dedicated to a particular saint or devotion and often funded by a wealthy family in exchange for burial rights and perpetual prayers said on their behalf, a practice called a chantry. The Sainte-Chapelle in Paris shows the form at its most ambitious, a royal chapel built by Louis IX specifically to house relics of Christ's Passion, its walls given over almost entirely to stained glass in a structural daring rarely attempted at such small scale.