Marseille Cathedral

Brief information

Next to Marseille’s new cathedral, a piece of the old one has survived: the choir and one bay of the nave from the 12th century. Two other bays were dismantled in the 1850s, when construction of the present cathedral began. As a result, the place reads not as a single completed monument, but as a replacement that left a fragment of the earlier building beside it.

The new cathedral, the Nouvelle Major, was built on a site that had been used for Marseille’s cathedrals since the 5th century. Its appearance also speaks of the 19th century: pseudo-Byzantine forms are combined with the style of the Italian Renaissance. The scale was chosen to match its new role: the building is 142 meters long, with a main dome 70 meters high, and is among the largest cathedrals in France.

What to notice first

The main comparison here is the old beside the new. At the Vieille Major, you can observe the very fact of what remains: one choir and one bay of the nave show that the former Romanesque cathedral was neither moved nor preserved in full, but partly dismantled to make way for the construction of a larger building.

At the Nouvelle Major, it is worth comparing the overall volume with the upper part of the building: its length of 142 meters and 70-meter main dome explain why the new cathedral was designed to seat 3,000 people. The decoration and silhouette should be read through the blending of styles: a pseudo-Byzantine foundation combined with the Italian Renaissance. Together, these details show not simply a change in taste, but a change in scale: the medieval fragment remained as a trace of the former cathedral, while the new building occupied the site as the large cathedral of the archdiocese.