Cathedrale Saint-Sauveur d'Aix

Aix Cathedral in Aix-en-Provence in southern France is a Roman Catholic cathedral and the seat of the Archbishop of Aix-en-Provence and Arles. It is built on the site of the 1st century Roman forum of Aix. Built and re-built from the 12th until the 19th century, it includes Romanesque, Gothic and Neo-Gothic elements, as well as Roman columns and parts of the baptistery from a 6th-century Christian church. It is a national monument of France.Origin of the CathedralLegends about its originThe cathedral is located on the route of the Roman road, the Via Aurelia. A fragment of a Roman wall and the columns of the baptistery seem to be the origin of the legend that the church was built on top of a Roman temple dedicated to Apollo. The historian Pitton (1668) claimed that the temple had been dedicated to a sun god, basing his claim upon the discovery of the leg of a statue uncovered at the site.According to the Christian tradition, the first church on the site was founded by Saint Maximinus of Aix, who arrived in Provence from Bethany, a village near Jerusalem, with Mary Magdalene on a boat belonging to Lazarus. Maximin built a modest chapel on the site of the present cathedral and dedicated it to the Holy Saviour (le Saint Sauveur).