Rouen Cathedral

Interesting facts

The Saint-Romain tower holds the 9.5-tonne bourdon named Jeanne d'Arc and a 64-bell carillon, the second-largest in France.

When American bombs set the Saint-Romain tower ablaze in June 1944, its bells melted and left molten metal on the floor below.

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.

Diane de Poitiers, later mistress of Henri II, commissioned her husband Louis de Brézé's tomb, showing him on horseback above and as a near-naked corpse below.

On the joint tomb of the two Cardinals d'Amboise, the nephew moved his uncle's statue aside and put his own in the place of honour.

The choir stalls, carved between 1457 and 1470 by Philippot Viart, keep misericords showing proverbs, fables and craftsmen at work.

The Romanesque cathedral that preceded the Gothic one was consecrated in 1063 in the presence of William of Normandy, three years before he conquered England.

During the Revolution the cathedral became a Temple of Reason, and the iron railings of its chapels were melted down to make cannon.

A gilded statue of the Virgin by Nicolas Quesnel, made in 1541, crowns the Lady Chapel at the east end.

Rollo's original tomb was destroyed in the 1944 bombing; the present one is a 19th-century copy of the tomb of Henry the Young King.

Why it is worth it

Rouen Cathedral is the building Claude Monet painted over and over in the 1890s, showing the same façade at different hours and in different weather; the canvases are now spread across museums from the Musée d'Orsay to Washington. Standing in the square in front of it you see what drew him: a façade so deeply carved that it is more lace than wall, flanked by two towers that do not match. On the left is the Saint-Romain tower, begun in 1145 in the earliest Gothic; on the right, the flamboyant Butter Tower of 1488–1506, said to have been paid for by people who bought the right to eat butter in Lent.

Above the crossing rises the third tower and its cast-iron spire, 151 metres high. It replaced a timber spire destroyed by lightning in 1822, and for a few years around 1880 it made Rouen Cathedral the tallest building in the world — not everyone was pleased; Flaubert mocked it as a metal-worker's delirium. It caught fire during restoration work in July 2024 but the blaze was put out the same day.

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.

Getting there

The cathedral stands in the centre of Rouen, about 0.5 km from the city centre, and Rouen–Rive-Droite station in the north of the city has regional trains to Paris. The nearest airport is Deauville–Normandie (DOL), about 69 km away and a small airport; flying into Paris and continuing by train is often more practical.

From the encyclopaedia

Rouen Cathedral is a Catholic church in Rouen, Normandy, France. It is the archiepiscopal seat of the Archbishop of Rouen, Primate of Normandy. It is famous for its three towers, each in a different style. The cathedral, built and rebuilt over a period of more than eight hundred years, has features from Early Gothic to late Flamboyant and Renaissance architecture. It also has a place in art history as the subject of a series of impressionist paintings by Claude Monet, and in architecture history, as from 1876 to 1880 it was the tallest building in the world.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Rouen Cathedral

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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From the encyclopaedia