The city's interest for the lover of religious associations is perhaps greater than for the lover of church architecture alone, but, as the two must perforce go hand in hand the greater part of the way, Annecy will be found to rank high in the annals of the history and art of the religious life of the past.
In the chapel of the Visitation, belonging to the convent of the same name, are buried St. François de Sales (d. 1622) and Ste. Jeanne de Chantal (d. 1641). The chapel is architecturally of no importance, but the marble ornament and sculptures and the rich paintings are interesting.
The ancient chapel of the Visitation—the convent of the first monastery founded by St. Francis and Ste. Jeanne—immediately adjoins the cathedral.
Christianity first came to Annecy in the fourth century, with St. Emilien. For long after its foundation the see was a suffragan of the ancient ecclesiastical province of Vienne. To-day it is a suffragan of Chambéry.
The rather ordinary cathedral of St. Pierre has no great interest as an architectural type, and is possessed of no embellishments of a rank sufficiently high to warrant remark. It dates only from the sixteenth century, and is quite unconvincing as to any art expression which its builders may have possessed.
The episcopal palace (1784) adjoins the cathedral on the south.
XVIII
CATHÉDRALE DE CHAMBÉRY
The city of Chambéry in the eighteenth century must have been a veritable hotbed of aristocracy. A French writer of that day has indeed stated that it is "the winter residence of all the aristocracy of Savoie; ... with twenty thousand francs one could live en grand seigneur; ... a country gentleman, with an income of a hundred and twenty louis d'or a year, would as a matter of course take up his abode in the town for the winter."
To-day such a basis upon which to make an estimate of the value of Chambéry as a place of residence would be, it is to be feared, misleading.