Basilica of Saint-Sernin

Stand still for a moment and look up. Above you rises a tower of warm, rose-coloured brick, stacked in tiers like a stone telescope. The bricks are not a single uniform colour. Some are almost orange, others pale pink, some darkened by centuries of rain. Around you, the square holds the soft sounds of Toulouse: footsteps on paving, a bicycle bell, perhaps pigeons settling on the ledges. This is the Basilica of Saint-Sernin, and you are standing beside one of the largest Romanesque churches still standing anywhere in Europe.

First, a quick word about that term. Romanesque is the style of building that spread across Europe roughly a thousand years ago, before the soaring Gothic cathedrals. It uses thick walls, rounded arches, and heavy, solid forms. Look at the windows and doorways here. Most of them curve in a full half-circle. That rounded arch is the signature of the style. Saint-Sernin is one of its finest surviving examples, and it has kept its scale and its shape remarkably well.

The church is named after Saint Saturnin, known in the local language as Sernin. He was the first bishop of Toulouse, in the third century, when Christianity was still a small and often persecuted faith in the Roman world. According to the traditional story, he refused to take part in a pagan sacrifice. As punishment, he was tied to a bull and dragged through the streets until he died. It is a brutal tale, and it shaped the map of the city you are walking through today.

If you came here from the Capitole, the main square, you may have walked along Rue du Taur. Taur means bull. Locals say the street follows the path of that terrible run, and that a small church on the way, Notre-Dame du Taur, marks the place where the bull finally stopped. This is tradition rather than documented fact. Still, it is a good example of how memory and legend are written directly into the streets of Toulouse.

The building in front of you was begun in the late eleventh century, replacing an earlier church that held the saint's remains. Construction took many decades. An important moment came in 1096, when Pope Urban II consecrated the altar. That was the same journey on which he travelled through France preaching the First Crusade. So this church was already a place of serious importance when much of it was still unfinished.

Why build something so large? The answer is pilgrimage. In the Middle Ages, huge numbers of people walked across Europe to Santiago de Compostela, in north-western Spain, to visit the tomb of the apostle Saint James. One of the main routes through southern France passed through Toulouse. Pilgrims stopped here to pray before the relics of Saint Sernin and many other saints. Because of this role, the basilica is part of a UNESCO World Heritage listing for the pilgrim routes to Santiago in France.

Now walk around to the outside of the eastern end, the rounded back of the church. This is one of the best views. The shape steps up in layers. Small half-round chapels sit at the bottom. Above them is the curved wall of the walkway behind the altar. Above that rises the main body of the church, and finally the tower. Each level is set back from the one below. The effect is like a hill of brick and stone, built slowly upward.

Look closely at the tower itself. It has eight sides. The lower levels have rounded arches, in the Romanesque style. The upper levels are different. Their openings come to a point, shaped like a bishop's mitre. These upper stages were added later, in the Gothic period. So with one glance you can see two different eras of building, one sitting directly on top of the other. Most visitors notice the height. Fewer notice that the tower changes style halfway up.

Before you go inside, find the Porte Miègeville, the doorway on the south side facing the street. Above the door is a carved scene in stone from the early twelfth century. It shows the Ascension, the moment Christ rises into heaven, with figures around him looking upward. On the columns and capitals below, carvers added smaller scenes and creatures. These sculptures are among the earliest large-scale Romanesque carvings in this part of France, and other workshops across the region learned from them.

Inside, the first thing many people feel is the length. The nave, the long main hall, stretches far ahead of you. It is lined with not one but two aisles on each side, which was unusual and allowed crowds of pilgrims to move around without disturbing services. The light is soft and even. Stone and brick combine in the columns and arches. Sound carries here. A cough or a closing door travels a long way down the vaulted ceiling.

Here is a detail many visitors walk past. Near the altar area, look for the marble altar table and for the stone relief panels set into the wall of the walkway around the choir. These are linked to a sculptor named Bernard Gilduin, whose name is carved on the altar. In the Middle Ages, artists very rarely signed their work. Finding a name here, from around the end of the eleventh century, is a rare and personal touch from a craftsman nearly a thousand years ago.

The church has also been shaped by later hands. In the nineteenth century, the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc carried out a major restoration, changing parts of the roof and exterior to match his own idea of the medieval style. In the late twentieth century, a later restoration removed some of his changes and tried to bring back an earlier appearance. So the building you see today carries the work of many centuries, including debates about what restoration should mean.

As you leave, pause again in the square. Notice how the houses and cafés around you use the same pink brick. Toulouse has very little good building stone nearby, so for centuries its builders relied on clay from the river valley, fired into brick. That is why the city is often called the Pink City. Saint-Sernin is its greatest brick monument, but the same material runs through ordinary streets all around you.

Take one last look at the tower against the sky. Pilgrims nearly a thousand years ago saw this same shape as they arrived, tired and dusty, after weeks of walking. Today you might hear traffic instead of hooves, or a phone instead of a bell. But the brick is the same, warming slowly in the light. As you walk away along the side streets, glance back once or twice. The tower stays in view for a long time.