Religious sites in France
Saint William's Church
Saint William"s Church is a gothic church is known for its sumptuous interior combining the Gothic and Baroque styles. Since the end of the 19th century, the excellent acoustics of the church has allowed it to serve as a venue for concerts of classical music, in particular for the Passions of Johann Sebastian Bach. Returning unharmed from the Crusades, the knight Henri de Müllenheim undertook the construction o ...
Founded: 1301 |
Location:
Strasbourg, France
Bayonne Cathedral
The Cathedral of Saint Mary of Bayonne is the seat of the former Bishops of Bayonne, now the Bishops of Bayonne, Lescar, and Oloron. The cathedral is in the Gothic architectural tradition. The site was previously occupied by a Romanesque cathedral that was destroyed by two fires in 1258 and 1310. Construction of the present cathedral began in the 13th century and was completed at the beginning of the 17th, exce ...
Founded: 13th century |
Location:
Bayonne, France
Abbey of St. Vaast
The Abbey of St. Vaast was founded in 667. Saint Vedast, or Vaast (c. 453–540) was the first bishop of Arras and later also bishop of Cambrai, and was buried in the old cathedral at Arras. In 667 Saint Auburt, seventh bishop of Arras, began to build an abbey for Benedictine monks on the site of a little chapel which Saint Vedast had erected in honour of Saint Peter. Vedast's relics were transferred to the new abbey, whi ...
Founded: 667 AD |
Location:
Arras, France
Fontfroide Abbey
Fontfroide is a former Cistercian monastery in France, situated 15 kilometers south-west of Narbonne. It was founded in 1093 by the Viscount of Narbonne, but remained poor and obscure until in 1144 it affiliated itself to the Cistercian reform movement. Shortly afterwards the Count of Barcelona gave it the land in Spain that was to form the great Catalan monastery of Poblet, of which Fontfroide counts as the mother house, ...
Founded: 1093 |
Location:
Narbonne, France
Sainte Marie de La Tourette
Sainte Marie de La Tourette is a Dominican Order priory on a hillside near Lyon designed by architects Le Corbusier and Iannis Xenakis. It was constructed between 1956 and 1960. Le Corbusier"s design of the building began La Tourette is considered one of the most important buildings of the late Modernist style. In July 2016, the building and several other works by Le Corbusier were inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage ...
Founded: 1956-1960 |
Location:
Lyon, France
Église de la Madeleine
The Église de la Madeleine is a Roman Catholic church in Aix-en-Provence. A convent of the Dominican Order and a Gothic church was built in the 13th century on the Place des Prêcheurs. However, it was burned down in 1383. It was rebuilt, but came down in 1465. The current church building was constructed in its place in the seventeenth century. It was designed by architect Laurent Vallon (1652-1724), and it was built fro ...
Founded: 1691-1703 |
Location:
Aix-en-Provence, France
Église Saint-Vincent-de-Paul
Église Saint-Vincent-de-Paul was built on a demolished convent and chapel of Reformed Augustinians, which explains why it is commonly known as 'Les Réformés' despite being a Roman Catholic church. The church building itself was designed by the architect François Reybaud and the abbey Joseph-Guillaume Pougnet, and built from 1855 to 1886. It is neogothic, with ogival curbs in the ceiling. The two arrows are 7 ...
Founded: 1855-1886 |
Location:
Marseille, France
Beauport Abbey Ruins
Beauport Abbey was founded by Alain I of Avaugour in 1202. The heyday of abbey was in the 13-14th centuries and the late 17th century. It was closed down and destroyed during the Great Revolution in 1790. The abbey was sold as private property in 1797 and later to the community of Kérity. The restoration began in 1992 and today it is one of the most important attractions in Brittany. The different buildings constructed ...
Founded: 1202 |
Location:
Paimpol, France
Église Saint-Jean-de-Malte
The Church of St. John in Aix-en-Provence, situated at the corner of rue d"Italie and rue Cardinale, is a Gothic Roman Catholic church, the first in Provence. It was built in the 13th century, mostly in the 1270s. The site was initially occupied in the twelfth century by a hospice and chapel of the Knights Hospitaller of the Order of Malta, under the jurisdiction of the priory of Saint-Gilles in Provenc ...
Founded: 1270s |
Location:
Aix-en-Provence, France
Poitiers Cathedral
Poiters Cathedral construction began in 1162 by Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine on the ruins of a Roman basilica, and work was well advanced by the end of the 12th century. It is the largest medieval monument in the city of Poitiers. It is built in the Romanesque and Early Gothic styles, the latter predominating. It consists of three naves almost equal in height and width, all three of which decrease towards ...
Founded: 1162 |
Location:
Poitiers, France
St. Malo Church
The beautiful St. Malo church is one of the finest examples of ecclesiastical architecture in the town of Dinan in Brittany. The structure was begun in the 15th Century and has for many hundreds of years served as one of the central places of worship for the community. The interesting architectural style is mirrored on the inside and the outside. It is well known for having a series of interesting stained glass windows an ...
Founded: 1490 |
Location:
Dinan, France
St. Nicholas Church
Saint Nicholas Church is a small Gothic church where Jean Calvin led services and preached in 1538. The Church no longer functions as a parish church, today it is used by a Charismatic group called 'Renouveau Saint Nicholas'. The church was built between 1387 and 1454 on the site of an earlier church dedicated to Mary Magdalene. This earlier church, which dated from 1182, was founded by the Knight Walther Spend ...
Founded: 1387-1454 |
Location:
Strasbourg, France
St. Nicholas Church
Fleeing from the Normans and carrying with them the relics of their founder, St-Laumer, some Benedictine monks found shelter in Blois where they decided to build their abbey. the present church, today known as St. Nicolas, but whose real name is St. Laumer, was the former abbey-church. From 1138 to 1186 these monks built the choir, the transept and the first row of columns of the abbey-church, completing it at the beginn ...
Founded: 1138-1186 |
Location:
Blois, France
Arras Cathedral
The original cathedral of Arras, constructed between 1030 and 1396, was one of the most beautiful Gothic structures in northern France, until it was destroyed in the French Revolution. The cathedral was the resting place of Louis de Bourbon, Légitimé de France, illegitimate son of Louis XIV and Louise de La Vallière. In 1833 the church of the former St. Vaast"s Abbey was rebuilt in classical sty ...
Founded: 1833 |
Location:
Arras, France
Auxerre Cathedral
Auxerre Cathedral is known for its expansive stained glass windows. Most of the Burgundian Gothic cathedral was built between 1215 and 1233 above an 11th-century crypt. Construction continued until the 1540s when the cupola, in Renaissance style that takes the place of one pinnacle on the completed tower, was completed. The first building campaign erected the chevet at the liturgical east end, followed later in the centur ...
Founded: 1215-1233 |
Location:
Auxerre, France
Knights Templars Chapel
Knights Templars arrived to Laon in 1128 and the octagonal chapel of commandry was built around 1140. After the templars order was dissolved, it moved to the hands of Knights Hospitaller.
Founded: 1140 |
Location:
Laon, France
Monastery of Saint-Paul de Mausole
Saint-Paul de Mausole is a former monastery in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Several rooms of the building have been converted into a museum to Vincent van Gogh, who stayed there in 1889–1890 at a time when the monastery had been converted to an asylum. The monastery was built in the 11th century. Franciscan monks established a psychiatric asylum there in 1605. In the aftermath of the 23 December 1888 breakdown that result ...
Founded: 11th century |
Location:
Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France
Vence Cathedral
The Cathedral Notre Dame de la Nativité, built in the 4th century took its final shape in the 12th century. The Tower Saint Lambert, vestige of the Bishop"s Palace of France dates from the same period. Inside, the size of the building can be surprising, but one is very quickly charmed by all the marvels which it contains: a fragment of a sarcophagus with low Gallo-Roman reliefs, pieces of Carolingian sculptures an ...
Founded: 12th century |
Location:
Vence, France
Nîmes Cathedral
Nîmes Cathedral is believed to stand on the site of the former Roman temple of Augustus. It is partly Romanesque and partly Gothic in style. The first cathedral was consecrated in 1096. The current appearance dates mainly from the 17th century. In 1822 the original Romanesque portal was demolished. The organ dates from 1643.
Founded: 1096 |
Location:
Nîmes, France
Ajaccio Cathedral
The present Ajaccio cathedral was built between 1577 and 1593 and is attributed to Italian architect Giacomo della Porta. It was built to replace the former Cathedral of Saint-Croix, destroyed in 1553 in order to make room for developments in the city"s defenses, as stated in the permit required by the Council of Ancients in 1559 to the Senate of Genoa and Pope Gregory XIII in order to build a new cathedral. ...
Founded: 1577-1593 |
Location:
Ajaccio, France