Mende Cathedral

About

Notre-Dame-et-Saint-Privat de Mende Cathedral is the episcopal seat of the diocese of Mende. Located in the city centre of the Prefecture of La Lozère, it has been listed as a historic monument since 1906. This is the only fully Gothic building in the entire department.

The church, whose construction was decided in the 1360s by Pope Urban V, succeeded three other shrines, the first of the Merovingian period, the second preroman, the penultimate novel. Richly decorated, it was the victim of the disturbances of the Wars of Religion and had to be largely rebuilt in the early seventeenth century; It will be completed in the 19th century by the addition of a neo-Gothic portal. Raised to the rank of minor basilica in 1874, the cathedral offers the veneration of the faithful a 12th century black Virgin.

Its furniture includes organs and woodwork of the seventeenth century, tapestries of Aubusson of the early eighteenth century, a high altar of the twentieth century; There is also the wing of the "Non-Parella", Christendom's biggest bell at the time of its establishment.