Église St-Trophime

Lonely Planet review

Arles was an archbishopric from the 4th century until 1790, and the Romanesque-style Église St-Trophime was once a cathedral. Built in the late 11th and 12th centuries on the site of several earlier churches, it's named after St-Trophime, a late-2nd- or early-3rd-century bishop of Arles.

On the western portal's intricately sculpted biblical scene façade (more spectacular than the interior), you will see on the far right of the left-hand side St-Trophime's depicted holding a spiral staff in his right hand. Inside the austere church, the most fascinating feature is the 'treasury', containing pieces of bone of Arles' bishops, who were later canonised. Many of the broken statues inside were decapitated during the French Revolution.