Medieval Toulouse & Languedoc - Art & architecture in south-west France

A day devoted to Toulouse, starting with Saint-Sernin, one of the principal monuments of Romanesque architecture in Europe, boasting two significant sculpted portals and acting as a major pilgrimage church in its own right as well as a stage on the road to Santiago de Compostela. Then to the Musée Saint-Raymond, housed in a former medieval hospital and home to much the best collection of Roman sculpture in south-western France. Afternoon walking tour of Toulouse, taking in the Capitole, Musée du Vieux Toulouse and river quays.

Famed for the warmth of its brick and the drama of its situation above the river Tarn, Albi is one of the outstanding towns of southern France. Visit the cathedral, a quite stupendous Gothic aisleless church, its huge vaults forming a crown 100 feet above the pavement. The afternoon will take us north, initially to Lescure d’Albigeois, home to a superb late 11th-century monastic church, and eventually to Monestiès, whose tiny chapel of St-Jacques houses one of the greatest sculptural cycles of Christ’s Passion from the late Middle Ages.

Morning spent within that marvellous assemblage of cloister, tower and church which is most of what now survives of the Benedictine abbey of Moissac. Most astonishingly the capitals of the cloister - the earliest historiated cloister to survive in Romanesque Europe - have come down to us complete. The afternoon will then unfold in Cahors, cathedral to the fore, where we shall meet the one southern French Romanesque form we have not hitherto encountered – the aisleless domed church – and in a building which is arguably the most majestic of them all.

A leisurely day in Toulouse, starting with the cathedral – its bizarre juxtaposition of an aisleless early 13th-century nave and unfinished later Gothic choir creating a memorable if disturbing silhouette. Then on to the Jacobins, a Dominican church built between 1244 and 1292 hard up against the former ‘Saracen wall’. The Jacobins is understandably regarded as one of the most architecturally accomplished mendicant churches in Europe, its reputation secured by its combination of slender columnar supports, low lateral chapels and an apse vault akin to half the Westminster chapter house. The afternoon is free for independent exploration. 

Carcassonne is a major medieval walled city, famously restored by Viollet-le-Duc and glorying in a remarkable network of intra-mural passages in addition to the castle and cathedral of St-Nazaire. This last is amongst the most significant churches of Mediterranean France – a curious amalgam of 11th-century nave and 13th-century presbytery, its eastern parts having been described as ‘the first and last stylistically pure Parisian Rayonnant work in the south’. Continue in the afternoon to Notre-Dame at Rieux-Minervois, a real virtuoso piece, whose seven-sided nave incorporates sculpture from the circle of the Cabestany Master.

Visit the spectacularly sited early Romaneque painted church of Saint-Lizier in the foothills of the Pyrenees, complete with an exquisite cloister. Break for lunch in nearby Saint-Girons, before driving up to Toulouse Blagnac airport. The return flight to London Heathrow arrives at c. 7.00pm.