NARBONNE.
A picturesque town in Southern France.
century, rises up above the roofs of the city, after the fashion of Chartres. In the eighteenth century an effort was made to complete the nave, but the unfinished masonry in front of the west end of the choir is all that was accomplished. The swing-doors lead into what might be called a ‘narthex,’ which is without windows, and the darkness is profound until one has stumbled cautiously into one of the aisles. There are fourteenth-century windows in the apse, and round the sanctuary are some interesting tombs, including those of Cardinal Briçonnet, Prime Minister under Charles VIII., and La Borde, President and General Treasurer of France (1607).
Over the door to the sacristy there are magnificent tapestries of the early Renaissance, and one should see the beautifully vaulted roof of the fifteenth-century chapter-house.
The Archbishop’s Palace is a huge fortified building, joined to the cathedral by a mutilated cloister. A portion of the palace has been adapted as the Hôtel de Ville, the new work by Viollet-le-Duc being in the style of the thirteenth century. The large turreted tower was built in 1318, and the central one in 1375.
The museum is in the buildings of what was formerly the Benedictine Convent of Lamourguier (thirteenth, fourteenth, and eighteenth centuries). On the same side of the canal—that is, on the opposite side to the cathedral—is the interesting Church of St. Paul-Serge, with a Romanesque nave, and a choir in the ogee style of Gothic, built early in the thirteenth century.
North of the cathedral is St. Sébastien, a church with fine fifteenth-century vaulting.