Cathédrale Sainte-Croix d'Orléans

Orléans

The dedication keeps the memory of the founding relic: the first church, raised around 330 and completed around 450, is said to have housed a fragment of the True Cross. After a great fire at the end of the 10th century and then the collapse of the Romanesque cathedral in the early 13th, Gothic reconstruction began in the late 13th century (works relaunched in 1287 after a collapse): the choir was inaugurated in 1329, the transepts begun in 1479. It was in this choir that Joan of Arc came to pray on 29 April 1429, before the deliverance of Orléans on 8 May — the building remains inseparable from the epic of Joan. In 1568, during the Wars of Religion, the Huguenots blew up the piers of the transept: the cathedral largely collapsed. On 18 April 1601 Henry IV came with the queen to lay the first stone of the reconstruction, pursued with rare obstinacy: bell tower completed in 1707, great towers raised from 1817 to 1829, the date of official completion — more than two centuries of "Gothic" building in the midst of the classical age. The organ, brought from the abbey of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, was installed in 1822. Only the choir preserves parts dating from the 14th century.

Getting there : Place Sainte-Croix, in the very centre of Orléans; free admission during the day.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound