Le Puy Cathedral

About

Notre Dame Cathedral in Puy-en-Velay is a major monument to Romanesque art and the Christian West. It was erected as a minor basilica by an apostolic brief of Pius IX on 11 February 1856. His full title is Notre-Dame-de-l'Annunciation du Puy-en-Velay. A black Virgin, the object of many pilgrimages over the centuries, sits on a baroque high altar. The present effigy replaces that which would have been offered by King Louis IX upon his return from the crusade of Egypt, and which was burned during the French Revolution. The cathedral is classified under the title of historical monuments by the list of 1862 (cloister, university, cathedral) as well as a classification in 1889 (buildings of mâchicoulis). It was listed in 1998 as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, together with the Hôtel-Dieu, as the path of Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle in France.

The local legends of Puy-en-Velay evolve around a stone, perhaps a megalithic slab, which occupied Mount Anis. This basaltic stone remains a part preserved in a chapel of Saint-Crucifix...