page_title: Aix Cathedral
section_title: Construction of the cathedral
hierarchical_section_title: Aix Cathedral / Construction of the cathedral
context_page_description: Aix Cathedral in Aix-en-Provence in southern France is a Roman Catholic church and the seat of the Archbishop of Aix-en-Provence and Arles. The cathedral is built on the site of the 1st-century Roman forum of Aix. Built and re-built from the 12th until the 19th century, it includes Romanesque, Gothic and Neo-Gothic elements, as well as Roman columns and parts of the baptistery from a 6th-century Christian church. It is a national monument of France.
context_section_description: Around the year 500, under the Bishop Basilius, a group of episcopal buildings was constructed on top of the old Roman forum, including a chapel, a baptistery and several other rooms.
  At the beginning of the 12th century, a new church was begun on the same site, with Romanesque walls bearing the three bays of a wide single nave, constituting a parish church dedicated to the Virgin Mary (Notre Dame de la Sède).
  A second nave, dedicated to Saint Maximinus, was built in about 1165–1177 as the church of the canons, which was located between the first nave and the baptistery.  The choir of this church ended in a flat chevet wall, which connected by a door with the Sainte-Chapelle, part of the original 6th century episcopal buildings. The chapel was rebuilt in the 12th century, and when the Gothic nave was added, was incorporated into the cathedral and became the oratory of the Saviour. It was destroyed in 1808.
  At the end of the 12th century and beginning of the 13th century,  Aix became the capital of Provence, and the city's population and importance grew rapidly. Religious orders began to arrive; the Franciscans first, then the Dominicans, Carmelites, and Augustinians, building new churches, monasteries and convents.
  A surge of construction on the cathedral paralleled the growth of importance of Aix. Two new wings of the transept, built in the Gothic style, were begun in about 1285–1290, and finished in 1316.  Bay by bay, the old Romanesque church was transformed into a Gothic cathedral.
  The building of the new church was interrupted by the Black Death and then the Hundred Years' War. Work did not resume for 130 years, until 1472, when the last bay was built. The façade took another thirty years, and the last statues were not put in place until 1513, at the beginning of the Renaissance.
caption: Statue of St. Peter in the cathedral cloister
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