Senlis: One of the First Gothic Cathedrals Inside Gallo-Roman Walls

Required Activities

• On the west portal, find the tympanum that was the first in Gothic art to show the Coronation of the Virgin, then look along the eight jamb figures — John the Baptist, Aaron, Moses and Abraham on the left — and pick out the heads: the originals were knocked off in the Revolution and recut in the mid-nineteenth century from Saint-Maximin stone, because the Senlis quarries had closed

• From the square, read the south spire from the bottom up: the square bell stage, the four richly worked dormers, then the pyramid built in one campaign around 1240 on the model of Chartres, its eight edges set with the rows of stone hooks that were a thirteenth-century innovation — then compare it with the stubby slate spire the north tower never got beyond

• Walk the full circuit of the old town, about 2,600 m, using the eighteenth-century planted promenades laid along the line of the medieval ramparts on the north side, and go into the grounds of the royal castle where Hugh Capet is said to have been elected king by his barons in 987 before being crowned at Noyon

• Walk round to the two transept fronts built by Martin and then Pierre Chambiges between 1520 and 1538: find the south portal whose tympanum is filled with stained glass instead of carving, and on the north gable the salamander and the letter F of François I, who paid for the rebuilding after the lightning fire of 1504