Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth de Vaison-la-Romaine

Vaison-la-Romaine

Vaison has two former cathedrals, on either side of the Ouvèze, and this one is the older. Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth stands in the plain, where the ancient town lived, and it is made of its remains: blocks of Roman architecture carry its foundations, columns and marbles salvaged from the ruins make it up, and the bell tower embeds the funerary cippus of a certain Publius Atilius Ingenuus. The chevet is older still: apse and apsidal chapels go back to the late 5th century, to the Merovingian period, and their plan in a horseshoe-shaped stilted arch takes up a form of early Christian architecture. The Romanesque church that extends them was built in the 11th century, then vaulted in the following century; its octagonal dome on squinches bears the symbols of the four evangelists, and the north apsidal chapel houses a richly carved table altar. Against the church, the canons' cloister, founded around 1010–1030 and rebuilt in the early 13th century, now houses a lapidary collection, including a 4th-century marble sarcophagus depicting the apostles. In the 13th century the population left the plain for the rock bearing the castle of the Counts of Toulouse, and it was up there that another church was begun in 1464, which was in its turn called a cathedral. The sources do not agree on what followed: for one, Notre-Dame remained the seat of the bishops until the suppression of the diocese in 1801; for others, it was long abandoned. The town having come back down into the plain, it became once again the parish church of Vaison at the end of the 19th century.

Wikipédia — Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth de Vaison-la-Romaine ↗

Getting there : Esplanade Yves-Meffre, in the lower town. Church and cloister freely accessible, generally every day from 10 am to 5 pm, from 1 February to 31 December (tourist office; opening dates to be checked). Not to be confused with the former cathedral of the Haute-Ville, on the other bank.

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

Ambient sound