Toulouse - St Sernin

In Toulouse, from the Place du Capitole Rue du Taur runs north, passing the 14th C. church of Notre-Dame du Taur, with a fortified facade, to the church of St Sernin.

The basilica of St Sernin, a wide brick-built church with a five-aisled nave and three-aisled transepts, is one of the most magnificent pilgrimage churches on the pilgrim road to Santiago de Compostela and one of the finest of all Romanesque churches.

The choir was built between 1075 and 1080 and consecrated in 1096, and the church was completed during the 13th C. It was restored by Viollet-le- Duc in the 19th C. It stands on the site of an earlier church in which St Saturninus (Sernin) was buried. Particularly fine are the choir with its ring of nine chapels and the six-story tower over the crossing which was much imitated in Languedoc and Gascony. It has imposing doorways, particularly the Porte Miégeville in the south aisle, with 12th C. Romanesque sculpture (on left King David, on the lintel the Apostles, in the tympanum the Ascension). In the south transept is the Porte des Comtes, with capitals depicting Lazarus and the rich man and the torments of the damned; to the left of the doorway is a recess containing four sarcophagi of Counts of Toulouse.

The cruciform interior has some notable features including seven 11th C. marble reliefs in the ambulatory, the 16th and 17th C. choir screens and the choir-stalls of 1670. In the apse is the tomb of St Sernin and in the north transept a large carved Romanesque crucifix. In the crypt is the church treasury, with numerous relics and six large polychrome wood statues of Apostles (14th C.).