Poitiers Cathedral

 Simon and Linda make a break for it out the side door. I had opened the door a moment earlier to help out a bloke carrying a pot plant. We hoped he wasn't stealing it...

Poitiers Cathedral is less well known than the Church of Notre-Dame la Grande just up the hill, but this immense religious edifice is visible from quite some distance in the surrounding countryside.

 

The very wide front of the Cathedral.

The Cathedral was commissioned in the middle of the 12th century, and consecrated in 1379. The project was funded by the Bishop and Chapter, Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II Plantagenet, and other pious parishioners. It is in the Angevin Gothic style (identified by the curved vaults on a square plan). 

 

 I liked the crozier motif railings at the front.

The Cathedral is also distinguished by its three aisles (or naves...), more or less equal in height and width, and covered with a single vast roof. The building is nearly 100 metres long and the nave and aisles over 30 metres high. The front has two towers that were not finished until the 16th century and borrows certain elements, such as the three great doors, from a more northern French style. The sculptures on the front represent the Last Judgement. It is one of the rare French cathedrals that does not have flying buttresses.

 

 Looking down the northern aisle.

The interior has 13th century choirstalls and stained glass windows from the 12th and 13th centuries. The window above the altar depicting the Crucifixion is one of the high points of French medieval stained glass.

 

A confessional.

Because it took so long to build there was quite a bit of undoing of earlier work in order to stay fashionable. The Angevin vaulting in particular started to look fairly out of date.

 

One side of the 13th century choirstalls.

1n 1346 during the Hundred Years War the Cathedral was pillaged by English troops. In 1562 during the Wars of Religion it was pillaged again, by Protestant troops. Over Christmas in 1681 a fire destroyed the organ and damaged the rose window. The window was reconstructed in a more floral style and based on the rose window in the North Transept of Notre-Dame de Paris.

 

The famous stained glass window above the altar, with rare images of Eleanor and Henry, which you can't see from the ground as they are obscured by the balustrade. The window is remarkable though and I would never have picked it as so early. Impossible to photograph with the phone unfortunately.