Cathédrale de la Major: The Byzantine-Romanesque Giant

Why is it significant?

Stand on the vast open esplanade overlooking the commercial ferry docks and gaze up at the colossal striped dome and twin seventy-meter bell towers of the Cathédrale Sainte-Marie-Majeure, affectionately called La Major.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Stand on the vast open esplanade overlooking the commercial ferry docks and gaze up at the colossal striped dome and twin seventy-meter bell towers of the Cathédrale Sainte-Marie-Majeure, affectionately called La Major. Spanning one hundred and forty-two meters in length, this is one of the largest cathedrals constructed in Europe since the Middle Ages, capable of holding three thousand worshippers.

Built between eighteen fifty-two and eighteen ninety-three during the reign of Emperor Napoleon the Third, the cathedral's unique striped facade alternates bands of green stone from Florence and luminous white limestone from Cassis, crowned with Byzantine domes that reflect Marseille's role as the imperial Gateway to the Orient.

Directly beside this nineteenth-century colossus, look at the modest stone arches of the Vieille Major, the twelfth-century Romanesque church partially dismantled to make way for the new giant, which sits over the excavated ruins of a fifth-century paleochristian baptistery.

Walk south across the high pedestrian walkway to Fort Saint-Jean and the MuCEM.