To-day it is ignored by all save the commis voyageur and a comparatively small number of the genuine French touristes.
Formerly the ancient province of Rousillon, in which Elne is situated, and which bordered upon the Spanish frontier, was distinctly Spanish as to manners and customs. It is, moreover, the reputed spot where Hannibal first encamped after crossing the Pyrenees on his march to Rome.
Like Bayonne, at the other extremity of the Pyrenean mountain chain, it commanded the gateway to Spain, and even to-day is the real entrance of the railway route to Barcelona, as is Bayonne to Madrid.
Between these two cities, for a distance approaching one hundred and eighty miles, there is scarce a highway over the mountain barrier along which a wheeled vehicle may travel with comfort, and the tiny Republic of Andorra, though recently threatened with the advent of the railway, is still isolated and unspoiled from the tourist influence, as well as from undue intercourse with either France or Spain, which envelop its few square miles of area as does the Atlantic Ocean the Azores.
To-day Elne is no longer the seat of a bishop, the see of Rousillon having been transferred to Perpignan in the fourteenth century, after having endured from the time of the first bishop, Domnus, since the sixth century.
There has been left as a reminder a very interesting and beautiful smaller cathedral church of the early eleventh century.
Alterations and restorations, mostly of the fifteenth century, have changed its material aspect but little, and it still remains a highly captivating monumental glory; which opinion is further sustained from the fact that the Commission des Monuments Historiques has had the fabric under its own special care for many years.
It is decidedly a minor edifice, and its parts are as unimpressive as its lack of magnitude; still, for all that, the church-lovers will find much crude beauty in this Romanesque basilica-planned church, with its dependant cloister of a very beautiful flowing Gothic of the fifteenth century.
The chief artistic treasures of this ancient cathedral, aside from its elegant cloister, are a bénitier in white marble; a portal of some pretensions, leading from the cathedral to its cloister; a fourteen-century tomb, of some considerable artistic worth; and a bas-relief, called the "Tomb of Constans."
There is little else of note, either in or about the cathedral, and the town itself has the general air of a glory long past.