The cathedral, built and rebuilt over a period of more than eight hundred years, has features from Early Gothic to late Flamboyant and Renaissance architecture.

He had completed the west front and first traverses when the work was interrupted by a major fire on Easter eve in 1200, which destroyed a large part of the town and seriously damaged the unfinished church and its furnishings.

[10] The first architectural addition to the new church was a series of small chapels between the buttresses on the north and south sides of the nave, requested by the city's prominent religious brotherhoods and corporations.

[11] Beginning in 1468 a highly ornamental new top, made of iron and covered with stone tiles, in the late Gothic Flamboyant style was added to the tower of Saint-Romaine.

Work on the tower had begun in 1488, under master builder Guillaume Pontifs, but under Cardinal d'Amboise in 1496 the project was taken over 1496 by Jacques Le Roux, who had a more ambitious plan with Renaissance touches.

The Pope authorised Cardinal d'Amboise to grant dispensations to consume milk and butter during Lent, in exchange for contributions to the tower.

In addition to his changes to the Cathedral, the Cardinal and his architect reconstructed and decorated the Palace of the Archbishop close by, adding a new reception hall, galleries, gardens and fountains.

[11] In the late 16th century the cathedral was badly damaged during the French Wars of Religion: in 1562 the Calvinists attacked the furniture, tombs, stained-glass windows and statuary.

In April 1944, seven bombs dropped by the British Royal Air Force hit the building, narrowly missing a key pillar of the lantern tower, and damaging much of the south aisle and destroying two windows.

In June 1944, a few days before D-Day, bombs dropped by the U.S. Army Air Force set fire to the Saint-Romain tower.

Then a new campaign began to consolidate the structure and to restore the statuary of the west front, including putting back four statues that had been moved elsewhere.

[17] Beginning in 1985, excavations were carried out beneath the church and its surroundings, which uncovered vestiges of the earlier Paleochristian buildings and foundations of the Carolingian cathedral.

[16] In 1999, during Cyclone Lothar, a copper-clad wooden turret, which weighed 26 tons, broke free from the tower and fell partly into the church, damaging the choir.

[21] The towering buttresses on either side of the central portal were installed in the 14th century to strengthen the west front, and were covered with galleries of sculpture to merge them into the rest of the decoration.

[24] Another fire in 1822 destroyed the lead and wood spire, which was then replaced, after much controversy, by the architect Jean-Antoine Alavoine with one of iron and copper, finished in 1882.

[25] In the 13th century four smaller towers, or tourelles, with spires, were added atop the buttresses that were built to support the west front, two on either side of the central portal below.

The gables were filled with sculpture; over the north portal, statues of the first archbishops, apostles and saints, and on the south, kings and prophets from the Old Testament.

[29] After the fire of 1200, the master builder Jean d'Andeli began to revise the plans, following the design used in High Gothic cathedrals, which had only three levels.

These modifications were possible thanks to another new technology, the flying buttress, which reaches over the collateral aisles to provide support to the upper nave walls, allowing them to be thinner and the windows to be larger.

A majority of the original seats are still in place, along with the carved decorations, called misericords, illustrating scenes from the Bible, as well as proverbs, fables and craftsmen at work.

It was constructed by master builder Jean Davi beginning in 1302, when the veneration of the Virgin began to play a larger role in Christian theology, and replaced a more modest earlier chapel.

[34] The central feature of the chapel is an enormous altar, made in the 17th century, framing a painting of the Virgin surrounded by carved and sculptural decoration.

The baldaquin or upper portion of the tomb is lavishly decorated with sculpture of the Apostles, in pairs, separated by Sibyls and Biblical kings.

Each medallion is made of small pieces of thick glass, deeply colored, particularly in reds and blues, bound together like mosaics with thin strips of lead.

[35] The "Belles Verrieres" are a group of windows located in the collateral chapels on the north side of nave and in the transept, containing some of the earliest stained glass in the cathedral.

They also made greater use of grisaille, or a greyish or white glass, which surrounded and set off the figures and also brought increased light into the cathedral.

Notable objects include the Châsse de Saint Roman, a miniature cathedral made of gilded copper, with figures of Christ and the Apostles (late 13th century); the Châsse de Notre Dame, a mini-cathedral of gilded bronze and enamel, devoted to the Virgin Mary (19th century); A 15th-century monstrance, an elaborate miniature tower embracing a crystal cylinder used to hold the host during the Eucharist ceremony; and the Ostentoire of Two Crowns (1777), a similar vessel for the host, decorated with a gilded crown and rays of light.

In literature, Gustave Flaubert was inspired by the stained glass windows of St. Julian and the bas-relief of Salome, and based two of his Three Tales on them.

The Cathedral also contains the tomb of Rollo (Hrólfr, Rou(f) or Robert), one of Richard's ancestors, the founder and first ruler of the Viking principality in what soon became known as Normandy.

The cathedral contained the black marble tomb of John of Lancaster, Duke of Bedford, one of the English commanders who oversaw Joan of Arc's trial.