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Basilica of Saint Severinus (Saint-Seurin)

Basilica of Saint Severinus (Saint-Seurin)

Jean-Baptiste Augier & Pierre-Alexandre Poitevin

Photo: Chris06 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Location
Bordeaux, France
Client / Owner
—
Year
Completed 1000
Access
Public
Typology
Spiritual

The Basilica of Saint Severinus in Bordeaux stands on a site with a fourth-century Christian necropolis. A religious building is attested in the mid-fifth century, and Viking invasions destroyed it in the ninth. A Romanesque reconstruction began at the start of the eleventh century, with the nave and choir built from the eleventh to the thirteenth century, and Gothic and Renaissance elements followed.

Vaults collapsed in 1566 and 1698. Jean-Baptiste Augier rebuilt and braced them in the early eighteenth century and backfilled the floor, which buried the crypt. In the late 1820s Pierre-Alexandre Poitevin created the neo-Romanesque west facade. Excavations in 1909 and 1910 uncovered the necropolis, and the crypt has been open to the public since the 1980s.

UNESCO inscribed it in 1998 on the Routes of Santiago de Compostela in France. It is an active parish church.

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