The Most Beautiful Cathedrals in France
9 places · updated 6 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful cathedrals in France are Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg, Notre-Dame de Paris and Basilica of Saint-Denis. The list covers 9 cathedrals. Last updated 6 October 2026.
The Gothic cathedral is a French invention. From the 1140s, starting at Saint-Denis, masons in the Île-de-France combined pointed arches, rib vaults and flying buttresses to make walls thinner and windows larger, and for about a century bishops and towns in northern France competed to build higher and brighter. The result is a group of cathedrals that set the standard for the whole of Europe.
The Basilica of Saint-Denis, burial place of French kings, is where it began. Notre-Dame de Chartres keeps most of its medieval stained glass and its labyrinth, Reims Cathedral was the coronation church of the kings of France, and Amiens Cathedral is the largest Gothic cathedral in France by interior volume. Notre-Dame de Paris, with its rose windows and flying buttresses, became the symbol of the city.
Bourges Cathedral has five portals and no transept, giving one long, unbroken interior, while Beauvais Cathedral has the tallest Gothic choir ever built, its vault rising about 48 metres, though the nave was never completed. Rouen Cathedral, painted again and again by Claude Monet, carries a cast-iron spire that is the tallest in France, and the Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg in pink sandstone was for more than two centuries the tallest building in the world.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg | Cathedral | |
| 2 | Notre-Dame de Paris | Cathedral | |
| 3 | Basilica of Saint-Denis | Cathedral | |
| 4 | Reims Cathedral | Cathedral | ✓ |
| 5 | Notre-Dame de Chartres | Cathedral | ✓ |
| 6 | Amiens Cathedral | Cathedral | ✓ |
| 7 | Rouen Cathedral | Cathedral | |
| 8 | Bourges Cathedral | Cathedral | ✓ |
| 9 | Beauvais Cathedral | Cathedral |
01 Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg
Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Strasbourg
France · 0.2 km from Strasbourg48.582° N 7.751° E
Image by jackmac34 from Pixabay The climb is the other half of the visit: a spiral staircase of 332 steps leads to the platform at 66 metres, at the foot of the spire, with a view over the rooftops of the old town to the Vosges and the Black Forest. Much of the original sculpture, including pieces smashed or replaced after the French Revolution, is now in the nearby Musée de l'Oeuvre Notre-Dame, run by the foundation that has looked after the cathedral since at least 1224. The cathedral and the Grande Île, the island at the heart of Strasbourg, are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Did you know? The celestial globe on the astronomical clock turns once every 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds, showing the 1,022 stars catalogued by Ptolemy.
02 Notre-Dame de Paris
Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris
France · 0.6 km from Paris48.853° N 2.350° E
Image by edmondlafoto from Pixabay On 15 April 2019 fire destroyed most of the roof and Viollet-le-Duc's spire. The stone vaults largely held, and the façade, towers and rose windows survived. The roof was rebuilt in oak from French forests, and a new spire went up in December 2023 following the 19th-century design. Inside, the cleaned limestone is strikingly pale compared with the grey many visitors remember. The building belongs to the French state and is used by the Catholic Church as the seat of the Archbishop of Paris. On the square in front, a marker set into the paving has served since 1924 as the zero point from which distances on French roads are measured.
Did you know? In 1756 the canons found the interior too dark and replaced almost all the medieval stained glass, except the roses, with plain white panes.
03 Basilica of Saint-Denis
Basilique Saint-Denis
France · 8.6 km from Paris48.936° N 2.360° E
Zairon · CC BY-SA 4.0 The abbey church became a cathedral when the Diocese of Saint-Denis was created in 1966. Its 86-metre spire was dismantled in the 19th century, and reconstruction has been under way since 2025, with completion planned for 2029; visitors can watch the building site as part of their tour.
Did you know? From 1124 until the mid-15th century, French kings rode to war under the Oriflamme, the sacred red battle banner kept at the abbey.
04 Reims Cathedral
Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Reims
France · 0.5 km from Reims49.254° N 4.034° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by DEZALB from Pixabay Over the following years of war the cathedral took upwards of 300 direct hits, and by the armistice large parts of the city around it were flattened along with it. Afterwards, reconstruction wasn't automatic — some voices argued the ruin should stand as a permanent memorial rather than be repaired. Rebuilding won out, but the crews replaced the old timber roof with heat-resistant concrete, a practical decision made by people who had just watched the previous roof burn for days.
Did you know? Clovis I, king of the Franks, was baptised on this spot by Saint Remigius around 496, which is why later French kings came here to be crowned.
05 Notre-Dame de Chartres
Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres
France48.448° N 1.488° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
BT · Public domain Inlaid into the floor of the nave is the labyrinth of the early 1200s, a single winding path that pilgrims follow on foot; on certain days the chairs are cleared so that it can be walked. The cathedral also keeps the Sancta Camisa, a relic said to be the Virgin's tunic, given to Chartres in the 9th century by Charles the Bald. A restoration begun in 2009 cleaned the glass and repainted the interior walls a pale cream with painted details, as they may have looked in the 13th century; the brighter interior is still a subject of argument.
Did you know? It is the only one of France's medieval cathedral labyrinths to survive in its original place.
06 Amiens Cathedral
Cathédrale Notre-Dame d'Amiens
France · 0.7 km from Amiens49.895° N 2.302° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Jean-Pol GRANDMONT · CC BY 3.0 Start outside with the west front, built in a single campaign from 1220 to 1236: three deep portals, the Last Judgement in the centre, Saint Firmin on the left and the Virgin on the right, with rows of carved prophets, apostles and local saints. Inside, walk the 240-metre labyrinth set into the nave floor, a nineteenth-century copy of the 1288 original; then the richly carved choir stalls of 1508–1519, among the cathedral's greatest treasures; and, on the outer walls of the choir, the painted stone reliefs of the lives of Saint Firmin and John the Baptist from around 1490–1530.
Did you know? The two west towers are unequal: the north tower reaches about 68 metres, the south tower roughly 6.5 metres less.
07 Rouen Cathedral
Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Rouen
France · 1.5 km from Rouen49.440° N 1.095° E
Image by JosepMBové from Pixabay Inside, the choir holds the tombs of the Dukes of Normandy: Rollo, the Viking chief baptised here in 915 who became the first duke, and a tomb containing the heart of Richard the Lionheart, whose body lies at Fontevraud. In the north-west corner of the transept, look for the fifteenth-century stair that once led up to the medieval library, and outside it the Portail des Libraires with its small sculpted medallions. The cathedral was hit by Allied bombs twice in 1944 in the run-up to D-Day and only reopened in 1956, with the choir refurnished around a Rococo figure of Christ by Clodion.
Did you know? During the storm of 26 December 1999, a 26-tonne copper-clad turret broke off the spire and crashed through the vaults into the choir.
08 Bourges Cathedral
Cathédrale Saint-Étienne de Bourges
France · 0.2 km from Bourges47.082° N 2.399° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by buettler from Pixabay Below the choir, a lower church built into the slope of the old ramparts is not really underground at all. It holds the tomb effigy of Duke Jean de Berry, the great patron of illuminated manuscripts, a Renaissance Entombment group and fragments of the 13th-century rood screen. The north tower can be climbed by 396 steps, with views over the city, the marshes and the plains of Berry.
Did you know? The nave vault rises about 37 metres, roughly four metres higher than Notre-Dame de Paris, and the arcade piers alone are 21 metres tall.
09 Beauvais Cathedral
Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Beauvais
France49.432° N 2.081° E
Image by SLPix from Pixabay Beauvais itself was almost entirely destroyed by bombing in the Second World War; in June 1940 six bombs fell on the cathedral without exploding. The building came through largely intact, and its figurative windows had been taken down in 1939 and stored away from the city, though the great organ was lost and replaced only in 1979.
Did you know? Dozens of automata enact a Last Judgment, with a crowing rooster, trumpeting angels, Virtue led to heaven and Vice pushed to hell.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful cathedrals in France?
- On our list, Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg ranks first, followed by Notre-Dame de Paris and Basilica of Saint-Denis.
- Which French cathedral has the tallest spire?
- Rouen Cathedral has the tallest spire in France, a cast-iron spire completed in 1876 that rises to about 151 metres.
- Why was Beauvais Cathedral never finished?
- Its builders pushed the choir vault to about 48 metres, the highest in Gothic architecture; part of the vault collapsed in 1284, and a tall crossing tower fell in 1573, after which the nave was never built.
- Is the stained glass at Chartres original?
- Yes, most of it. Chartres keeps the largest group of medieval stained glass of any cathedral, much of it from the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, including the deep blue of the Notre-Dame de la Belle Verrière window.
- How many cathedrals are on this list in France?
- The list covers 9 cathedrals.