"Toulouse Cathedral"

A Romanesque cathedral was constructed on the same site beginning in about 1078. It included works of classical sculpture, such as a votive altar, probably from an earlier church. Examples are now displayed in the Musée Saint-Raymond in Toulouse. This early building was probably begun by bishop Isarn (1071 to 1105), and was continued by his successor Amiel (1105 to 1139)

At the beginning of the 13th century (1210–1220), as the church received several large donations, the nave was largely rebuilt atop the vestiges of the earlier cathedral. The style of the new nave is often called "Raymondine", for Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse. It was the first important example of southern French Gothic architecture. Most of the cathedral today dates from this period. In 1271 a new bishop quickly adopted the High Gothic and Rayonnant style established in northern France. In about 1272, he commissioned a new architect, probably Jean Deschamps to construct the new choir in the northern style. the bishop died, however, and construction stopped.

New construction and renovations continued through the 14th, 15th, 16th  and 17th centuries.during the French Revolution, the church was turned into a "Temple of Reason"and all religious statues and artifacts were smashed.  On April 19, 1802, under Napoleon Bonaparte, the church was formally returned to the Catholic Church.

The architect Jacques Jean Esquié redecorated the chapels of the choir between 1848 and 1868. The Chapel of the Relics was restored by Auguste Virebent from 1842 to 1847, and the retable of the altar of the Paris was remade in 1847–1848 in the neo-Gohic style, with elements of sculpture copied from earlier works.

Restoration efforts continued in the 19th century and in 1911, the chief architect of Historic Monuments, Auguste Saint-Anne de Louzier, proposed a plan to restore some of the older elements and marry them with new construction. The cathedral is built of brick, like many churches in southern France, due to a lack of suitable stone.

The irregular west front exists because the cathedral consists of two incomplete churches of different periods, awkwardly put together. The first, the nave, dating from the early 13th century (1210 to 1220), includes the rose window from 1230 on the west front.

The choir was begun was about 1272, on a new plan and a different axis, was very slow in construction. The new, more ornate northern French Gothic style was introduced to fight heresy through preaching and more dramatic and inspiring architecture.

The interior is as disconcerting as the exterior because the two sections are not on the same axis and juxtapose two styles of Gothic architecture. A massive round pillar, built at the beginning of the 16th century in an attempt to begin the transept, now stands incongruously between the two parts, lining up with the center of the nave in the west, and with the south pillars of the choir in the east. Of the 15 chapels, the oldest date from 1279 to 1286, but the majority were completed during the 14th century. Most of the stained glass is 19th-century, but there is glass from almost every century beginning with the end of the 13th in the Saint Vincent de Paul chapel. This is the oldest stained glass in Toulouse.