Widely known as “the Black Cathedral” in Clermont-Ferrand, the Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption has a distinctive appearance and a rich history that are unique in France.

I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to write about a landmark that is prominent in all my memories of life in the deep heart of France:  the Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption, perched atop a steep volcanic butte in the medieval center of Clermont-Ferrand.

That city will always be my home away from home when I’m in France, and I’ve written often about why Clermont is one of the best places to live in France, and about why we love the town so much.  I’ve written about that one forgotten day when Clermont was the capital of France, and I’ve written about its famous native sons like Blaise Pascal and the Michelin brothers. Somehow, though, I’ve never gotten around to writing about the single most iconic structure in this ancient city: its famous “Black Cathedral”!

True, it is smaller and further off the beaten path than many of the most famous Gothic centers like the ones in Paris, Rouens, Chartres, and Reims.  But it has a unique history of its own, and it holds the distinction of being the only “Black Cathedral” in mainland France.  (At least, that’s how most people seem to think of it.  You could make the argument that it’s really the only “dark gray” cathedral in the country – but whatever the color, it’s different!)

If you drive into almost any town in the central Auvergne, you’d be forgiven for thinking that there’s something dark and a little foreboding about it.  It might take a moment, but you’d quickly arrive at the reason: many of the houses, the big public buildings, and the fountains in the central square all have the same dark gray-black tone.  The somber air of the whole region comes from this pervasively common building material: the pierre de Volvic – lava rock from the village of Volvic.

The logic is rock solid (if you’ll forgive the pun):  Clermont-Ferrand is nestled in the heart of the Chaine des Puys, a line of about 80 extinct volcanoes stretching across almost 30 miles in the deep heart of France.  Where I live now, in Texas, everything sits on vast deposits of limestone, so most buildings here are the light-yellow color of limestone.  Logically, volcanic lava is the most abundant building material to be found in France’s Massif Central, so it’s no surprise that when Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption was built almost 800 years ago, great blocks of the stuff were carted here from the quarries in Volvic.

(The bigger question, for me, is how they transported them down from the mountains seven miles away and back up to the building site on the steep little butte in the center of Clermont.  The answer: lots of back-breaking labor and herds of animals used to drag the blocks over log rollers over an extended period. I think it’s worth a short day trip to Volvic to see how the extraction of this stone worked in an age of manual labor and simple machines.)

Clermont was considered an “ecclesiastical city” for more than a thousand years – that is, it generally fell outside the control of French kings and under the governance of its Catholic bishops since the time of the Roman occupation of Gaul.  The first Bishop of the city was Saint Austromoine, the Roman missionary who came here around the year 250.  There’s been a church of one type or another on this same site since at least 450 C.E.   In 760, King Pépin le Bref (“the short”) had the first cathedral destroyed to get back at the Duke of Aquitaine; it was rebuilt but destroyed again in 915 when Viking raiders swept through this part of France.  A third cathedral – in the classic Romanesque style so characteristic of this region – was consecrated in 946 and lasted until the current building was started around 1248 C.E. (although it wasn’t finished for almost 500 more years!)

Clermont’s importance in the Catholic Church was particularly on display in 1095 C.E., when Pope Urbain II came to town, assembled the greatest knights from all of France, and commissioned them to launch the First Crusade to conquer Jerusalem.  He also used that ultimate tool of the medieval church to exercise control over secular governments: he took advantage of the occasion to excommunicate King Phillpe 1st.

That concentration of church power in Clermont clearly irritated the Counts of Auvergne for a very long time.  (That’s why they created the fortified town of Montferrand to be a commercial center next door to Clermont; it has all but been absorbed by its larger neighbor.)  But the local Bishops mostly won their appeals to maintain their independence and control the local government, so the standoff endured until 1553, when Catherine de Medici stripped them of most of their civil power and declared the city to be under royal control    In 1630, King Louis XIII issued the “Edict of Troyes”, ordering a merger between Clermont and Montferrand; the unification was confirmed again by Louis XV in 1731.

During the French Revolution (1793-1794), the building was renamed “the Temple of Reason” and a little later, “The Temple of the Supreme Being” (there’s still a plaque to that effect over the north doors).  Theoretically, that meant it wouldn’t be destroyed in the waves of anti-clerical violence that accompanied the Revolution.  In reality, though, much of the church’s furniture was burned, the bells were melted, and many of its statues of saints and biblical figures were defaced or shattered.

Even after 500 years of work, the church in 1850 did not look much like it does today.  The most significant ‘modern’ modification is the work of Viollet-le-Duc.  He was a remarkable and controversial character, and after the ravages of the French Revolution he had plenty of work in the mid-1800s.  (This is the guy who restored the famous Gothic spire to Notre Dame in Paris and put the walls of Carcassonne back into their “original” medieval state.)  What he did in Clermont in 1866 was not exactly “restoration” as much as “creative interpretation”: he drew up the plans, and one of his students managed the construction of a large porch and the two towering black spires to this building, spires that make the church visible whether you approach it from the flat plains of Limagne or the rugged volcanic peaks to the west.

The shocking fire that destroyed Notre Dame in Paris in 2019 called attention to a problem that exists everywhere in France.  Many of the country’s most famous monuments are crumbling; some have been closed because of the danger they might collapse on visitors, others (like the cathedral in Nantes in 1972) have also suffered damage from fire and weather.  The problem is exacerbated by the fact that most cathedrals of any importance built before 1905 belong to the French government or the local municipality, not to the Catholic Church.  Local congregations have the right to use the space for their services, but the staggering costs of maintaining and restoring these medieval masterpieces fall on the same governments that are struggling to keep up with the basics of infrastructure, health care, and housing.

That’s true in Clermont, too.  It’s a little unsettling to go into the Cathedral de Notre Dame de l’Assomption today and see lots of heavy netting hanging from the ceiling, but it would be even more unsettling to be hit by a falling chunk of mortar out of the fragile roof!  There’s also a great deal of lead (and lead powder) in the building – from the lead roof installed in the 16^th century to the paints used in some of the artwork and the lead channels that hold together the old stained-glass windows.  Finally, there’s always a risk of fires like those in Paris and Nantes.

All that means there’s a 21.5 million Euro project, started in 2023, to treat some of the cathedral’s most critical problems.  The first phase is mostly preventative – installing access points and colonnes sèches to support firefighters in case of an emergency.   Later phases, from now until 2029, will attack leaks in the roof and generally shore up the infrastructure of the church.

All that being said, it is still a remarkable medieval landmark and there are many reasons to go inside, including:

• An ensemble of extraordinarily beautiful stained-glass windows, many of which are believed to have been commissioned by Saint Louis (King Louis IX) for the wedding of his son, Philippe, which took place here. We don’t know the names of the artists, but historians think they must be the work of the same people who created the famous windows that grace the Sainte Chapelle in Paris (also commissioned by Saint Louis).

• The altar, made of brass and covered in gold plate, designed by Viollet-le-Duc in 1856.

• Some medieval paintings added to the walls from the 1100s to the 1400s. Most are scenes from the lives of saints, but I thought it was especially worth going to the Chapel of Saint Georges to see the depiction of the soldier’s martyrdom in a bloody battle with the Saracens.

• The Grand Organ (you can hear a sample of its sound here)

• A remarkable mechanical clock mounted high on the walls. The city of Clermont bought it from a monastery and brought it here in 1577.  It shows a figure of Time, depicted as an old man with wings, surrounded by Faunus, representing pleasure, and Mars, the god of war.  You should go at noon to see those two pounding out the hour on the head of Time.

We first saw the inside of the cathedral in Clermont on a bright, frigid Easter morning in 1998.  After weeks of balmy spring weather, we woke to snow and subfreezing temperatures and drove into town for the Easter mass.  Everyone in the crowd sat hunched forward in overcoats, hats, and gloves, but cold still radiated from the dark stones at our feet and up through our legs.

We’re not even remotely Catholic, so the elements of the service were not particularly meaningful to us.  At that point, early in our first expatriation, our French was not good enough to understand nearly everything that was happening.  But we thought it was important and interesting to learn everything we could about our newly adopted French community, and clearly this cathedral was a physical embodiment of something very important to that community.

That morning, for the first time, I had the powerful feeling that I’ve come to associate with many of our visits to the ancient churches around the deep heart of France:  a tangible sense of the history that flows through a place like this, a way to imagine people making their way to this building every Sunday for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years – years of famine and plague, years of violent invasion and occupation, years of happiness and celebration, years where nothing much happened and years when it felt like the whole world was coming apart at the seams.  And in that moment, I could feel the sense of security and continuity that a landmark like this can give a community, standing in solid strength as the events of the world outside swirl around it like a mistral wind.

Do you have a particular landmark in France that has special meaning for you?  A place that symbolizes something beyond the physical landscape?  Please tell us about it in the comments section below.  Thanks for reading!

Unless otherwise noted, all photos in this post are copyright © 2025 by Richard Alexander