The Cathedral of Saint-Léonce stands at the heart of the episcopal quarter, a complex that feels more like a fortified village than a simple church. The building grew in layers over many centuries — the baptistery alongside it predates the main structure by hundreds of years, and the cloister was added in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The result is an architectural palimpsest where Roman stone sits beside Romanesque carving and Gothic vaulting.
The cloister is the highlight: two storeys of slender columns surround a courtyard garden, and the ceiling of the upper gallery is painted with a remarkable series of scenes including animals and monsters alongside religious imagery. It is cool and quiet in summer when the rest of the town bakes, and the small museum inside holds fragments of Roman sculpture and medieval objects found in the area. The baptistery, entered from the cloister, retains its original columns, some of them Roman granite, and the atmosphere inside is ancient and still.