Avignon Cathedral

Standing proud and beautiful with a golden Virgin Mary rising high above Avignon and a staircase numbering as many steps as words from the Lord's Prayer, Cathédrale Notre-Dame des Doms d'Avignon is inseparable from the Palais des Papes. The cathedral of Doms, first built in the 4th century and destroyed by the Saracens in 731, is considered one of the oldest religious buildings in the city. It was rebuilt in the 12th century in a Provencal Romanesque style with a porch and portal decorated with frescoes executed in 1340 by Simone Martini, favorite painter of the popes. Several chapels hold masterworks such as a ecce homo (Christ with a crown of thorns) in painted stone dating from the 16th-century and the canopied Gothic tomb of Pope John XXII (1345), an important work in monumental masonry.