The porch | ©Anecdotrip.com / CC-BY-NC-SAClotilde! Immortalized with her husband, king Clovis, under the big porch, among other Merovingian princes... With its 70 metres high spire, the basilica is pretty impressive! A real medieval cathedral...
Oh, not really. In fact, i's a pastiche from the 19th century! At that time, people loved medieval stuff... In the past, we found here a small chapel dedicated to Saint-Valère... which was destroyed.
In 1827, they decided to rebuild a church. Architect from Cologne Christian Gau started the building site in 1846: he was inspired by Gothic cathedral of Rouen, in Normandy! But Gau died in 1853...
Théodore Ballu, his partner, finished the church 4 years later. Pope Leon XIII set it up as a minor basilica in 1897, in order to celebrate king Clovis' baptism!