The Collégiale Saint-Salvy is a collegiate church at the heart of the old town that represents four centuries of ecclesiastical building, from a Romanesque foundation in the 11th century to a Gothic completion in the 15th. The cloister, entered from the south side of the church, is one of the most peaceful spaces in Albi — a small, quiet courtyard with carved capitals and the kind of unhurried atmosphere that the cathedral, with its visitor crowds, sometimes lacks.
The church's tower is one of the oldest surviving structures in the city, and the layering of Romanesque and Gothic construction is clearly legible in the masonry of the nave. It tends to be overlooked by visitors heading directly from the cathedral to the Toulouse-Lautrec museum, which is precisely why it is worth slowing down for.