11 underrated cathedrals worth seeing
Eleven cathedrals that rarely make the postcards, from a brick fortress in southern France to a sandstone church on an Orkney island, and what to look for once you step inside.
The MySavior teamUpdated · 9 min read
How lovely is Your dwelling place, O LORD of Hosts!
From Psalm 84:1 · BSB
Splendor and majesty are before Him; strength and beauty fill His sanctuary.
Psalm 96:6 · BSB
The most underrated cathedrals in Europe sit just off the usual route: Albi in southern France, Ely in the English Fens, St Magnus on Orkney, Nidaros in Norway, Šibenik on the Croatian coast, Monreale above Palermo and a handful more. Any of them would be world famous if it stood in a capital city. Instead they stand in market towns, on islands and along old pilgrim roads, and they are quieter for it.
Strictly, a cathedral is the church that holds a bishop’s chair, the cathedra. But the word has come to mean something larger: a building into which generations of ordinary people, most of them unnamed, poured their skill and their savings and their prayers, often without living to see the roof go on.
The eleven below run from the coast of Norway to the middle of the Mediterranean, with a few lines on what to look for when you get there. Every one of them is still a working church, so go in quietly, and if a service is on, stay for it.
The pilgrims’ cathedral of the north
Nidaros Cathedral, Trondheim
Trondheim, NorwayNidaros CathedralNidaros stands over the grave of King Olav II, who was killed at the Battle of Stiklestad in 1030 and honored as a saint soon after. Built between 1070 and 1300, it is the northernmost medieval cathedral in the world, and for centuries it drew pilgrims from all over the North.
It has not had an easy life. Fire gutted it in 1708, leaving only the stone walls, and a reconstruction that began in 1869 was declared complete only in 2001. The west front, crowded with carved figures, was restored between 1905 and 1983: four generations of patient work on one wall. Norway’s new monarchs are still consecrated here.
Red sandstone on an island
St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall
Kirkwall, Orkney, ScotlandSt Magnus CathedralEarl Rögnvald began St Magnus in 1137 and dedicated it to his uncle Magnus, an earl of Orkney put to death on the island of Egilsay and honored as a martyr. It is the most northerly cathedral in the United Kingdom, built of red sandstone quarried near Kirkwall and yellow stone from the island of Eday, often laid in stripes and chequers.
Two details make it unusual. It belongs not to a church but to the local council, as successor to the old burgh of Kirkwall. And in 1919 workmen found a box of bones hidden in one of its pillars, with a skull marked by a wound like the blow of an axe. They are widely believed to be Magnus himself.
Where Denmark buries its kings
Roskilde Cathedral
Roskilde, DenmarkRoskilde CathedralRoskilde was begun around 1170 and is one of the earliest Gothic cathedrals in Scandinavia built of brick, a style that went on to spread across northern Europe. Since the fifteenth century it has been the main burial place of the Danish monarchs, and walking its chapels feels like turning the pages of a family album carved in marble.
In the Chapel of the Magi, look for the King’s Pillar, where visiting kings had their height marked. Peter the Great of Russia, measured in 1716, is the tallest. It is a disarmingly human detail in a church full of tombs: even kings stood against a wall to be measured, like children in a kitchen doorway.
The Ship of the Fens
Ely Cathedral
Cambridgeshire, EnglandEly CathedralOn the night of 12 to 13 February 1322, Ely’s Norman central tower collapsed. Instead of putting a new tower back on the same four piers, the builders widened the crossing into an octagon, overseen by Alan of Walsingham, and William Hurley, a master carpenter in royal service, crowned it with a lantern of timber.
Stand underneath and look up. The central boss is about 43 meters above the floor, light pours in from eight sides at once, and a disaster has become the loveliest thing in the building. Outside, the cathedral rises so far above the flat fenland that locals call it the Ship of the Fens.
A fortress outside, a painted jewel box inside
Albi Cathedral
Albi, FranceAlbi CathedralFrom the street, the Cathedral of Saint Cecilia looks like a castle. It was begun in 1282, in the aftermath of the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars, to show the power of the bishop and his stand against heresy, and it is often called the largest brick building in the world.
Then you step inside, and nearly every surface is painted. Italian artists covered the blue and gold vaults between 1509 and 1512, and the west wall holds an immense Last Judgment from the end of the fifteenth century, about 15 by 18 meters. The cathedral was consecrated in 1480. Cecilia, the Roman martyr it honors, is remembered on November 22.
More glass than wall
León Cathedral
León, SpainLeón CathedralLeón’s cathedral rose mostly in the thirteenth century, and it holds nearly 1,800 square meters of stained glass, the great majority of it from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. So much of the wall is glass that the building seems to be held up by color, and on a bright afternoon the stone floor turns blue and red.
People call it the Pulchra Leonina, the beautiful one of León. It stands on the Camino de Santiago, and pilgrims bound for Compostela still walk through its doors. Come early, sit near the middle of the nave and give your eyes a few minutes before you reach for your phone.
A verse for the doorway
Psalm 26:8
O LORD, I love the house where You dwell, the place where Your glory resides.
Psalm 26:8 (BSB)
Every cathedral on this list was built by people who meant these words. David is not praising architecture here. He loves the house because of who lives in it, and that is worth carrying through the door of any church, grand or plain.
If you want to keep the verse close after you leave, MySavior’s wallpaper maker lets you write it over a photograph, like the one on the phone below, and save it for your Lock Screen.
Sunday, November 8
9:41
O LORD, I love the house where You dwell, the place where Your glory resides.
Psalm 26:8 · BSBTurn this verse into your Lock Screen wallpaperWrite it over a photograph in MySavior’s wallpaper maker and save it to Photos at the size of your iPhone’s screen.
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The great Gothic church of the east
St Elisabeth Cathedral, Košice
Košice, SlovakiaSt Elisabeth CathedralSt Elisabeth’s is the largest church in Slovakia and one of the easternmost Gothic cathedrals in Europe. Work began late in the fourteenth century, and the building was considered finished in 1508. The roof is laid in colored tiles, and inside, the main altar, made between 1474 and 1477, carries 48 Gothic paintings on its wings.
The crypt holds a quieter story. In 1906 the remains of Francis II Rákóczi, the Hungarian prince who died in exile, were brought home from Turkey and laid here beside his mother. The cathedral honors Elizabeth of Hungary, the young princess who spent herself on the poor; her day is November 17.
A cathedral made only of stone
Cathedral of St James, Šibenik
Šibenik, CroatiaCathedral of St JamesThe Cathedral of St James took more than a century to build, from 1431 to 1535, and it is made entirely of stone, from the footings of the walls through the vaults to the dome. Its master builders, Juraj Dalmatinac and Nikola Firentinac among them, worked out their own ways of fitting the stone together, and UNESCO listed it in 2000.
Walk around the outside of the apses and look up. More than seventy carved heads run along the cornice, faces of every age and temper: solemn, worried, a few almost comic. Five centuries on, they still seem to be watching the square.
Built for a relic of the Eucharist
Orvieto Cathedral
Orvieto, Umbria, ItalyOrvieto CathedralOrvieto’s cathedral was founded on 13 November 1290 to house the Corporal of Bolsena, an altar cloth tied to a miracle of 1263, when a priest who doubted Christ’s presence in the Eucharist saw the Host bleed onto the linen. The relic is still carried in procession on the feast of Corpus Christi.
The facade, attributed to Lorenzo Maitani, glitters with mosaics, and the long flanks are banded in pale travertine and dark basalt. Inside, find the Chapel of San Brizio, where Fra Angelico began the vault in 1447 and Luca Signorelli painted the end of the world around 1500.
A hillside of gold above Palermo
Monreale Cathedral
Monreale, Sicily, ItalyMonreale CathedralKing William II began Monreale in 1174 on a hill above Palermo, and its walls carry about 6,500 square meters of glass mosaics in the Byzantine style. Much of the background is gold leaf sealed in glass, so the church seems lit from within even on a gray day.
In the apse, Christ Pantocrator, the Ruler of All, looks down over the altar with one hand raised in blessing. Norman kings, Byzantine artists and craftsmen schooled in Arab design all left their mark here, and since 2015 the cathedral has been part of a UNESCO World Heritage site with the Arab-Norman monuments of Palermo.
Plain outside, glorious inside
St John’s Co-Cathedral, Valletta
Valletta, MaltaSt John’s Co-CathedralThe Knights of St John built their church in Valletta between 1572 and 1577, to a design by the Maltese architect Girolamo Cassar. The facade is sober, almost military. Inside, from the 1660s, the painter Mattia Preti transformed it into a blaze of Baroque gold and carved stone.
Look down as well as up: the floor is a patchwork of marble tombstones over the graves of about 400 knights and officers of the Order. Then find the Oratory, where Caravaggio’s Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, painted in 1608, still hangs. It is his largest canvas and the only painting he ever signed. The Church remembers that martyrdom on August 29.
A small practice for your next visit
Before you take a single photograph, find a seat and stay ten minutes. Look for one thing a builder made that nobody will ever thank them for: a carved head high on a wall, a capital half hidden behind a pillar, a patch of glass too high to read. Then pray for the people who made the place, and for the ones who will pray in it after you have gone home. Cathedrals were built slowly, by people who mostly did not live to see them finished. The least we can do is slow down inside them.
Carry a little of the cathedral home
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Questions
What is the most underrated cathedral in Europe?
There is no single answer, but Albi in France, Ely in England, St Magnus in Kirkwall, Nidaros in Trondheim, Šibenik in Croatia and Monreale in Sicily are often overlooked next to Notre-Dame, Cologne or St Peter’s, and each is extraordinary in its own way. If you want the biggest surprise between the outside and the inside, start with Albi.
What is the difference between a cathedral and a church?
A cathedral is the church that holds a bishop’s chair, the cathedra, and serves as the mother church of a diocese. Size has nothing to do with it: some cathedrals are small, and some very large churches are not cathedrals. A co-cathedral, like St John’s in Valletta, shares that role with another church, and a few churches, like St Magnus in Kirkwall, keep the name long after the bishops have gone.
How should I visit a cathedral respectfully?
Dress modestly, keep your voice low, and do not wander around during Mass or other services. Many cathedrals have set visiting hours or close parts of the building during worship, so check the cathedral’s own website before you go. And if you can, light a candle or sit and pray for a while: that is what the building is for.
Which saints are these cathedrals named after?
Several honor saints with deep local roots: Nidaros was built over the grave of Saint Olav, Norway’s king, and Kirkwall’s cathedral is dedicated to Saint Magnus of Orkney. Albi honors Saint Cecilia, the Roman martyr, and Košice honors Saint Elizabeth of Hungary. MySavior’s Saint of the Day widget shows Elizabeth on November 17 and Cecilia on November 22.
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