La basilique Saint-Julien de Brioude, en Auvergne

That's the official name of the church in Brioude that we stopped to see on a Saturday morning, last March 9. It was a perfect day and a perfect stop. The bonus was that Saturday is market day in the town, so there were a lot of people out shopping and a lot of market stalls. Even so, parking the car and walking around the town with the dog on a leash was easy. The Brioude market is where we bought some of the local cheeses I posted about a couple of days ago.

Anyway, I really wanted to go into the big church and see the interior, after seeing a photo of it in the Michelin Guide. Construction began in the 11th century on the site of earlier church buildings. Saint Julien, a Roman soldier who had converted to Christianity and sought refuge in the Auvergne mountains, was martyred (decapitated) near Brioude in the year 304 A.D.

Three successive churches were built over the site of his tomb in Brioude, and pilgrims came  from all over France for centuries. In the 6th century, Grégoire de Tours, historian and the bishop of Tours (near Saint-Aignan), wrote about saint Julien and Brioude. The church you see today in in the polychrome Auvergne style and was built largely over the years from 1060 into the early 1200s.

On that Saturday morning a few weeks ago, I went into the church at the tail end of a big group on a guided tour, so I had to try to stay out of the way while still getting some photos. Here are three images that might give you a feel for the volume and height of the church. It's about 75 meters (250 feet) long and there are vaults as tall as 22 meters (nearly 75 feet).