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Lescar Cathedral

Lescar Cathedral

Photo: Lembeye · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Location
Lescar, France
Client / Owner
Bishop Guy de Lons
Year
Completed 1120
Access
Public
Typology
Spiritual

Lescar Cathedral is a Roman Catholic church dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, and it is a former cathedral. Bishop Guy de Lons began construction in 1120. The apse is Romanesque and has a twelfth-century pavement mosaic with hunting scenes. Column capitals inside show scenes from the life of Daniel, the birth of Christ and the sacrifice of Isaac.

The church was the seat of the Diocese of Lescar until the diocese was suppressed in the Concordat of 1801 and divided between Agen and Bayonne. Protestants sacked it during the reign of Jeanne III of Navarre, and the sanctuary vault collapsed in 1599. It was restored in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and became a monument historique in 1840.

From the late fifteenth century it was the burial place of the royal family of Navarre. Excavations in 1928 and 1929 rediscovered the royal crypt.

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