The Cathedral of Saint-Étienne is the defining monument of Meaux — a Gothic pile begun around 1175 and not fully completed until the sixteenth century. The west façade is the showpiece: three deeply recessed doorways carved with biblical scenes, a rose window above, and two asymmetrical towers that were never raised to their intended height, giving the whole thing an appealingly unfinished grandeur. Inside, the proportions are spectacular: a nave of cathedral scale for what was always a modest provincial city, with triforium and clerestory working in concert to flood the interior with light. The medieval stained glass in the choir chapels is among the best preserved in the Île-de-France. Allow at least an hour to do justice to the building. The south transept looks onto the former bishop's garden, a fine vantage point.
story: > Bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, one of the most powerful orators of seventeenth-century France and a close adviser to Louis XIV, preached in this cathedral for eighteen years. His funeral orations — for Queen Henrietta Maria, for Condé, for the Duchess of Orléans — are still studied in French schools today, and he composed several of them here in Meaux before delivering them in Paris.