The builders encountered resistance from the nuns of the nearby abbey, who caused considerable damage during construction.

Much of the building took place in the 13th century, and some of the stained glass dates to that period, but completion of the church was delayed for many years due to war or lack of funding.

The main structural elements are built from a resistant limestone from Tonnerre, while softer local chalk is used for infilling masonry of the walls.

There is a short nave with three bays, a transept that does not project from the side walls and a stubby chevet that ends in three polygonal apses.

The apse has two levels of glass windows, which create a luminous area around the altar, above a plain masonry base.

The sanctuary, transept and nave have a strongly built arcade at the lower level supported by composite piers, above which rises a clerestory of similar height.

[7] The architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc (1814–79), who led the Gothic revival of the 19th century, considered that Saint-Urbain represented the finest example of the system of construction in which the columns that support the vault extend continuously into the arches of the vault, without the massive Romanesque capitals of earlier periods.

[4] The original church glazing followed the new band window style, with colored compositions in large rectangular fields surrounded by bright grisaille glass.

[11] Viollet le Duc dated the stained glass in the church to around 1295, but the ornament in its borders and grisaille is from an earlier tradition.

It has a cross-hatched ground, as in Merton College, Oxford, but has a very simple leaded pattern and includes much natural foliage.

This is a carved stone recess in the choir where the ampoules containing holy oils are placed, pierced with holes through which waters used in purification ceremonies are poured.

Above these decorations, which were damaged during the French Revolution, is a carved representation of armed soldiers, clergymen and workers struggling to defend the walls of a medieval town against enemies.

With the return of peace in the mid-15th century the city recovered, and its workshops making sculpture, paintings and stained glass flourished.

The sculptural style from before the wars was revived, with the Gothic tradition of clean lines, simple facial expression and sober garments.

[14] The statue of the Vierge aux Raisins in the chapel on the south aisle is an excellent example of the Troyes school of the 16th century.

[2] However, some of the studios in Troyes, such as those of the Maitre de Chaource, resisted these innovations and continued to create works of great quality in the pure Gothic tradition.

Although Pope Urban IV died the next year his nephew, Cardinal Ancher, supervised the continued construction.

In 1266, when the date on which Saint-Urbain would be consecrated had already been decided, the abbess Ode de Pougy sent a gang to the site that destroyed as much as possible.

In 1268 the nuns hired armed men who prevented the Archbishop of Tyre and the Bishop of Auxerre from blessing the new cemetery.

[4] The architect Paul Selmersheim (1840–1916) finished the upper part of the nave at the end of the 19th century according to the original plan.