La Rochelle Cathedral () is a

Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a place/building for Christian religious activities and praying * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian comm ...

located in the city of

La Rochelle La Rochelle (, , ; Poitevin-Saintongeais: ''La Rochéle'') is a city on the west coast of France and a seaport on the Bay of Biscay, a part of the Atlantic Ocean. It is the capital of the Charente-Maritime Departments of France, department. Wi ...

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

. The

cathedral A cathedral is a church (building), church that contains the of a bishop, thus serving as the central church of a diocese, Annual conferences within Methodism, conference, or episcopate. Churches with the function of "cathedral" are usually s ...

has been a national monument since 1906. Cathédrale Saint-Louis

Present cathedral

The Diocese of La Rochelle (

Diocese of La Rochelle and Saintes The Diocese of La Rochelle and Saintes (; ) is a Latin Church diocese of the Catholic Church in France. The diocese comprises the département of Charente-Maritime and the French overseas collectivity of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. The bishop is a ...

from 1852) was created in 1648 but the first stone of the new cathedral was not laid until 1742, by which time the architect who drew up the plans,

Jacques Gabriel Jacques Gabriel (1667 – 23 April 1742) was a French architect, the father of the famous Ange-Jacques Gabriel. Jacques Gabriel was a designer, painter and architect of the 17th and 18th centuries and one of the most prominent designers of t ...

, was dead; the work was supervised, from a distance, by his son

Ange-Jacques Gabriel Ange-Jacques Gabriel (; 23 October 1698 – 4 January 1782) was the principal architect of King Louis XV of France. His major works included the Place de la Concorde, the École Militaire, and the Petit Trianon and opera theater at the Palace of ...

. Although still not complete, it was consecrated anyway in 1784. The structure is a rather bare Neo-Classical one. The cupola has paintings by

William Bouguereau William-Adolphe Bouguereau (; 30 November 1825 – 19 August 1905) was a French academic painter. In his realistic genre paintings, he used mythological themes, making modern interpretations of classical subjects, with an emphasis on the female ...

, a native of the city.

St. Barthélémy

Attached to the

chevet In architecture, an apse (: apses; from Latin , 'arch, vault'; from Ancient Greek , , 'arch'; sometimes written apsis; : apsides) is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault or semi-dome, also known as an '' exedra''. In Byzan ...

of the present cathedral is the late medieval

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, a Germanic people **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Gothic alphabet, an alphabet used to write the Gothic language ** Gothic ( ...

bell tower A bell tower is a tower that contains one or more bells, or that is designed to hold bells even if it has none. Such a tower commonly serves as part of a Christian church, and will contain church bells, but there are also many secular bell to ...

of the Church of St. Barthélémy (

Saint Bartholomew Bartholomew was one of the twelve apostles of Jesus according to the New Testament. Most scholars today identify Bartholomew as Nathanael, who appears in the Gospel of John (1:45–51; cf. 21:2). New Testament references The name ''Bartholomew ...

), first constructed in 1152 by monks from the

Ile d'Aix Ile or ILE may refer to: Ile * Ile, a Puerto Rican singer * Ile District (disambiguation), multiple places * Ilé-Ifẹ̀, an ancient Yoruba city in south-western Nigeria * Interlingue (ISO 639:ile), a planned language * Isoleucine, an amino aci ...

, the rest of which was destroyed by the

Huguenot The Huguenots ( , ; ) are a Religious denomination, religious group of French people, French Protestants who held to the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, ...

s in 1568. The tower, on one of the highest points of La Rochelle, was used as a gun tower against the besieging army of

Louis XIII Louis XIII (; sometimes called the Just; 27 September 1601 – 14 May 1643) was King of France from 1610 until his death in 1643 and King of Navarre (as Louis II) from 1610 to 1620, when the crown of Navarre was merged with the French crown. ...

in 1627. The displaced parishioners were able in 1628 to take over as their church the ''grand temple'', a former Protestant church adjacent to the site of the medieval St. Barthélémy, only to find in 1648, on the creation of the Diocese of La Rochelle, that the new chapter wished to use it as the cathedral. The parishioners therefore built a new church of St. Barthélémy nearby, which was completed in 1678. The older church however burnt down in 1687 and the chapter moved into the new church, which they and the parish were obliged to share until the consecration of the new cathedral in 1784. The church was entirely destroyed during the French Revolution and the site re-developed with houses, which were demolished later in the 19th century when it was possible to finish the cathedral.

References

External links

* *
La Rochelle et Son Histoire: Tours

French Ministry of Culture {{DEFAULTSORT:La Rochelle Cathedral Roman Catholic cathedrals in France Churches in Charente-Maritime Monuments historiques of Charente-Maritime Buildings and structures in La Rochelle Tourist attractions in La Rochelle