Stained glass is a special kind of artwork that uses the special effects of sunlight through coloured paints to turn common glass into something amazing.

It began in medieval times when windows started to be built bigger than ever before. Before this, no one knew how to make a big opening in a building without it falling down, so this new kind of window gave an amazing opportunity to tell a story through the windows of a church or a cathedral and at a much bigger size than ever before.

In a way, the stained glass is a similar kind of art as the paintings in ancient bibles (called illuminated manuscripts). Most people at this time could not read, and so paintings were an important way of telling a message. The message was usually a story about an event in the Bible.

Today it is possible to use special paints of almost any colour on glass, but to begin with there were very few colours they could use. Many stained glass windows are entirely or partly mosaics, using tiny pieces of coloured glass. Modern stained glass windows often use the same kind of design, but they don't need to hold the tiny bits of glass in place with strips of lead as they did in medieval times.

The stained glass gives a light similar to the light you see from a TV, rather than the light reflected from the surface of a book. This is why it is especially vibrant, and has amazed people down the ages.