The Way of Saint James and the Cathedral

Name: The Way of Saint James and the Cathedral
Start: 2022-09-18T16:30:00+02:00
End: 2022-09-18T17:30:00+02:00
Location: Cathédrale Sainte-Marie et cloître

Discover the cathedral with historian Pierre Louis Giannerini.

Sunday 18 September 2022, 16:30Passed

Conditions

Free. Free entrance.

©Mairie Oloron Sainte-Marie

Discover the cathedral with historian Pierre Louis Giannerini.

A major work of the Chemin de Saint-Jacques en Béarn, inscribed on the World Heritage List under the title of the cultural property «Chemins de Saint-Jacques en France», the Sainte-Marie Cathedral has characteristics specific to pilgrimage buildings. The sculpture of its portal shows us the links that linked it with other buildings of the Compostela road like Toulouse or Santiago.

About the location

Cathédrale Sainte-Marie et cloître

Place Pasteur, 64100 Bayonne

Pyrénées-Atlantiques
Nouvelle-Aquitaine

Sainte-Marie Cathedral stands in the heart of the city, on the small hill overlooking the Nive. It is one of the largest Gothic churches in the Pyrenean region (80 m long, 33 m wide, 26 m high under the vault in the central vessel).
After the 1258 fire that destroyed the first Romanesque cathedral, the construction of the new Gothic building stretched from the second half of the 13th century to the beginning of the 16th century. The influence of the great cathedrals of northern France (like that of Soissons) can be seen in the ambulatory. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the south bell tower was endowed with the present belfry and an imperial dome and the choir with a carpeted decoration surrounding the liturgical space. This monumental ensemble arrived very mutilated by time and men until the nineteenth century.
In the second half of the century, the exterior architecture was modified and completed and its interior decoration was decorated in a neo-Gothic style. The work w