The Cathédrale St-Sauveur is amazing in that it has a lot of eye-candy for the architecturally inspired. That would be me. I love Romanesque, Gothic and – not so much – the Baroque styles of architecture and this cathedral supplies all three, except that you wouldn’t know that by looking at the cathedral from the outside.

I’m a sucker for an open door, I just have to walk through it. So as I was walking up rue Gaston de Saporta one afternoon, I noticed that the big heavy doors were open and I just had to walk through them.

Inside it was quite dark, but my eyes adjusted. I began by thinking there wasn’t very much to see here, but I walked around anyway. I had been working on a photographic series that I called Look Up, so I scouted the interior for potential images, and wow did I hit pay dirt. The photo chosen for today is one of my favorites from that shoot. It is not manipulated, except for one tiny patch to cover some hardware that was sticking out into the dome. That’s pretty much the color that the camera captured.

The site on which the Cathedrale St-Sauveur was built has been considered sacred for thousands of years. It first hosted a pre-Roman pagan temple, then a Roman temple, and finally the Christian church that stands today.

Construction of St-Sauveur was regularly interrupted by wars, plagues, and other problems, and as such encompasses a variety of architectural styles. Cathédrale St-Sauveur began with the baptistery in the 4th or 5th century, followed by the cloisters a few hundred years later.

Further structures, including the naves, bell tower and doors, were added over the course of the Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque periods.

During the French Revolution, the decorative panel above the doors was destroyed and remains a blank space. The statues on the face of the church were decapitated and the heads were subsequently lost (the current heads are replacements). … – Sacred Destinations

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