Cathédrale Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Belley

Belley

On 5 April 722, a deed mentions the cathedral of Belley for the first time, and with it its treasure: a relic of Saint John the Baptist, half of his right hand. In the 12th century a Romanesque church rose, of which the north portal remains, long the main entrance, with its archivolt of voussoirs resting on colonnettes with foliage capitals. Between the end of the 15th century and 1520, it was given a Gothic choir ringed by five radiating chapels. On the eve of the Revolution, Bishop Gabriel Cortois de Quincey commissioned from the Lyon sculptor Joseph Chinard a Virgin, begun in Rome and completed in 1789; she is still in the axial chapel, more Roman lady than Madonna, and it is said that the revolutionaries spared her, perhaps to have her represent Reason. For the cathedral, turned into a Temple of Reason, then lost its relics and its two bell towers, and the earthquake of 1822 shook it further. First bishop, in 1823, of the diocese re-established in 1822, Alexandre-Raymond Devie undertook to raise it again: from 1835, the Lyon architect Antoine Chenavard rebuilt the nave, the transept and the façade in a Gothic of his own time, harmonising the new parts with the old choir, which he kept. The façade is reduced to a forty-metre porch tower, whose pinnacles carry sixteen statues of saints and bishops. From 1869 to 1875, the painter Antoine Sublet and other artists covered the interior with wall paintings, which accompany the 19th-century stained-glass windows.

Wikipédia — Cathédrale Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Belley ↗

Getting there : Rue Saint-Jean, in the centre of Belley (address given by Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Tourisme). Free access according to the same site; opening times to be checked. Chinard's Virgin is in the axial chapel, the Romanesque portal on the north façade of the transept.

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

Ambient sound