Vienne Cathedral is a Roman Catholic cathedral, dedicated to Saint Maurice

Saint Maurice

Saint Maurice was the leader of the legendary Roman Theban Legion in the 3rd century, and one of the favorite and most widely venerated saints of that group. He was the patron saint of several professions, locales, and kingdoms...

, and a national monument of France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, in the city of Vienne

Vienne, Isère

Vienne is a commune in south-eastern France, located south of Lyon, on the Rhône River. It is the second largest city after Grenoble in the Isère department, of which it is a subprefecture. The city's population was of 29,400 as of the 2001 census....

, Isère

Isère

Isère is a department in the Rhône-Alpes region in the east of France named after the river Isère.- History :Isère is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790. It was created from part of the former province of Dauphiné...

.

It was formerly the seat of the Bishops, later Archbishops, of Vienne, abolished under the Concordat of 1801

Concordat of 1801

The Concordat of 1801 was an agreement between Napoleon and Pope Pius VII, signed on 15 July 1801. It solidified the Roman Catholic Church as the majority church of France and brought back most of its civil status....

. Its territory was transferred mostly to the Diocese of Grenoble, while the title was added first to that of the Archbishops of Lyon, known between 1822 and 2006 as the Archbishops of Lyon-Vienne, and then from 2006 to that of the Bishops of Grenoble, now known as the Bishops of Grenoble-Vienne.

The Gothic

Gothic architecture

Gothic architecture is a style of architecture that flourished during the high and late medieval period. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture....

 church was built over a long period, between 1052 and 1533. It is a basilica

Basilica

The Latin word basilica , was originally used to describe a Roman public building, usually located in the forum of a Roman town. Public basilicas began to appear in Hellenistic cities in the 2nd century BC.The term was also applied to buildings used for religious purposes...

, with three aisles, but no apse or transepts, 315 feet in length, 118 feet wide and 89 feet in height. The most striking portion is the west front, which rises majestically from a terrace overhanging the Rhône

Rhône

Rhone can refer to:* Rhone, one of the major rivers of Europe, running through Switzerland and France* Rhône Glacier, the source of the Rhone River and one of the primary contributors to Lake Geneva in the far eastern end of the canton of Valais in Switzerland...

. But the sculptural decoration was badly damaged by the Protestants in 1562, during the French Wars of Religion

French Wars of Religion

The French Wars of Religion is the name given to a period of civil infighting and military operations, primarily fought between French Catholics and Protestants . The conflict involved the factional disputes between the aristocratic houses of France, such as the House of Bourbon and House of Guise...

.

Sources