The
visit has must start outside, while being placed at the east of the apse.
The harmonious
row of the masses, which attracts the glance towards the bell-tower, comes
to rest, while being detached some visually, on the imposing Eastern frontage
of the transept.
One recognizes the volume dominating of the chancel
and the major apse,
the belt of the ambulatory which serves the five radiating chapels and, two
to two, the absidioles grafted over the transept.
The vault of axis, more projecting than the others,
offers a required mural decoration with an illusion of blind arcade in its
low part and the antique opus reticulatum in the blind windows.
On the floor of the platforms of the chancel
and transept,the semicircular arch, of rule in all this Romance architecture,
governs also the full opening of windows whose splayings are decorated, as
to the major apse, of posts and capitals which accompany the rollers by the
arcs.
The bell-tower
of octagonal form established to transept crossing reveals its four states
of conservation.
The level low corresponds to the cupola; it is characterized, on each face,
by two blind windows covered with Roman arches.
The
two stages which surmount it, each one in light withdrawal, take again this
party of two windows on each face, but those are opened and their underlined
arcs of a stone archivolt.
The two higher stages, built in second half of the XIII° C., undoubtedly
before
1283, continue this rise pyramidale.The opening from now on are covered with
arcs " in mitre ", a new reminiscence of Roman architecture with
Saint-Sernin.
Lastly, in 1478, its spire made rebuilt in masonry, carrying
its summoned final sphere of a cross to a 65 m height.
