07/20/2026
At the top of these stairs stands Cathédrale Sainte-Marie-Majeure, known in Marseille simply as La Major.
Its first stone was laid in 1852, when Marseille was expanding around its new commercial port. The cathedral took more than forty years to complete and was positioned so that ships entering the harbor would see it from the sea. It remains the only cathedral built in France during the nineteenth century.
Léon Vaudoyer designed La Major in the Romano-Byzantine style. A Latin-cross plan and twin bell towers belong to the architectural language of Western Europe, while the domes and cupolas look toward the churches of Istanbul and the eastern Mediterranean. Bands of pale and green stone run across the façade, joined by Carrara marble, stone from Florence, Calissane and the Gard, onyx from Italy and Tunisia, and mosaics from Venice. Marseille did not build locally and think small.
