Cathédrale de la Major

When Napoleon III laid the first stone in 1852, he set in motion a forty-year project that would produce the largest cathedral built in France since the Middle Ages. La Major was designed to be seen from the sea, a monument to match the ambitions of France’s premier Mediterranean port. The result is 142 meters of Romano-Byzantine excess: white Carrara marble alternating with green Florentine stone, Venetian mosaics, Tunisian onyx, and enough porphyry to make a Byzantine emperor weep with envy. It can hold 3,000 worshippers, its dimensions drawing comparison to St. Peter’s in Rome.

It didn’t rise on empty ground. The site had held a cathedral since the 12th century, a modest Provençal Romanesque building that stood there for nearly 700 years before Napoleon III’s architects came through. Rather than clear it entirely, builders demolished only two bays of its nave, leaving the choir and one remaining bay standing, now known as the Vieille Major, wedged in the shadow of the new basilica’s bulk. It’s rarely open to the public, a genuine medieval masterpiece effectively eclipsed by the imperial statement built beside it.