It is a large brick building whose construction started in 1230, and whose architecture influenced the development of the Gothique méridional (Southern French Gothic) style.

In response to the technical difficulty posed by creating a vaulted roof for the new space, the builders installed one oversized column in the centre from which the ribs radiated outwards in all directions.

In 1368 Pope Urban V decreed that his remains be transferred from Italy where he died to the Jacobins, the mother church of the order.

In succeeding years, the building housed an exhibition of Arts and Industries (1865), served as a playground for the pupils of the nearby Lycée Fermat starting in 1872, and as a place to safely store treasures from the museums of Paris during World War I.

The spaces between the buttresses of the nave also show the same ogival arch, in which is set a tall, narrow triple-lancet window.

There is hardly any decoration, which is considered to have been a conscious choice aimed at differentiating this church from the highly elaborate Gothic of northern France.

[1][9] The nave also served as a model in the development of Southern French Gothic architecture in presenting a very unified space.

The double-nave layout, however, one side for the friars and the other for the congregation, turned out to be inconvenient and was not imitated, whereas the choice of columns to support the Gothic vaulted roof was.

A seventh column continuing the same line supports the 22 ribs of the vaulted roof of the choir, the famous Palm Tree.