Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-la-Seds de Toulon

Toulon

Its name preserves the trace of its function: “la Seds”, from the Latin sedes, the seat, that of the Bishop of Toulon, who sat here until the suppression of the diocese in 1801. Wikipedia places its beginnings in the 10th century, on the initiative of the Count of Provence Boso of Arles, who wanted a church dedicated to the Virgin; the Mérimée database dates the first Romanesque cathedral to 1096. In the 16th century, it found itself at the heart of a singular episode: in the autumn of 1543, on the orders of Francis I, ally of the sultan against Charles V, the fleet of the Ottoman admiral Khayr ad-Din Barbarossa came to winter in Toulon, most of whose inhabitants were evacuated; the town was then nicknamed “little Constantinople”. Several accounts assert that the cathedral was turned into a mosque. Others dispute it: the chroniclers of the time say nothing of it, and the cathedral registers show that baptisms continued there during the corsairs' stay; Voltaire reportedly speaks only of a house turned into a mosque. The 17th and 18th centuries then gave the church its present appearance: enlargement from 1654 to 1659, taking in the former Chapel of the Holy Relics, classical façade by Albert Duparc from 1696 to 1701, bell tower from 1737 to 1740. Inside, several paintings by Pierre Puget, among them an Annunciation of 1650 and a Saint Roch Praying for the Plague-Stricken, stand alongside the marble and stucco altarpiece of the Corpus Domini, the work of his pupil Christophe Veyrier.

Wikipédia — Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-la-Seds de Toulon ↗

Getting there : Place de la Cathédrale, in the old town, about five minutes' walk from the harbour. According to Provence Lovers, entry is free and the church open from 8 am to 7 pm, on Sundays from 7.30 am to 12 noon then from 4 pm to 7.30 pm (single source, to be checked). The paintings by Pierre Puget are in the side chapels.

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

Ambient sound