Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption de Clermont

Clermont-Ferrand

In 1248, Bishop Hugues de La Tour, still mindful of the Sainte-Chapelle that had dazzled him on a visit to Paris, decided to launch the building of a new cathedral. He entrusted it to the architect Jean Deschamps, who directed it until 1287. The material has nothing Parisian about it: it is Volvic stone, a dark volcanic rock, that gives the building its colour, so much so that the Goncourts nicknamed it the “coal-merchants' cathedral”. On 28 May 1262, the king came to Clermont in person: Saint Louis married his son, the future Philip the Bold, to Isabella of Aragon in the choir. The stained-glass windows then filling the choir appear to have come from the same workshop as those of the Sainte-Chapelle, and the king is reputed to have paid for them; the two transept roses, one blue, the other orange, are 14th-century. Building progressed slowly. The Tour de la Bayette, raised from 1325 to 1340, is the only one of the transept towers to have come through the Revolution: it owed its survival, it is said, solely to its practical usefulness, since it told the time. Beneath the choir, the 10th-century crypt, a remnant of the Romanesque cathedral consecrated in 946, preserves a 4th-century white marble sarcophagus, and two chapels retain rare wall paintings of the 13th and 14th centuries. The building was not completed until the 19th century: the west façade and the two spires were then finished according to the plans of Viollet-le-Duc.

Wikipédia — Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption de Clermont ↗

Getting there : Place de la Victoire, at the top of the hill of old Clermont. Opening times and free entry to be checked; guided tours are reported on Tuesdays and Fridays at 11 am from mid-July to the end of August (to be checked for the current year).

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

Ambient sound