[1] In the 5th century, bishop Namatius laid the foundations of the city's first cathedral, allowing the Christian community to leave its ghetto, the "vicus christianorum".

The present crypt (made up of an ambulatory and radiating chapels) dates back to this 10th century church, and included a 4th-century white marble sarcophagus.

In 1248, inspired by a visit on Sainte-Chapelle on a trip to Paris, bishop Hugues de la Tour decided to launch work on a new cathedral.

Constructing a church in the prestigious Northern Gothic style would thus allow him to assert his supremacy over a city that had been put back into its bishop's power (rather than that of the counts of Auvergne) just some decades earlier.

The most striking feature of the structure is the material used: it is the locally-cut volcanic "pierre de Volvic" (of the Trachyandesite type) that gives the building its dark colour and whose strength allows the construction of highly delicate pillars.

Inspired by Beauvais and Amiens, he realized original plans in which the windows do not occupy all the available space between the supports and do not have any bracing arches, the ribs directly penetrate under the arch, the choir-rotunda pillars' elliptical plan allows all the light from the apsidal windows to penetrate into the sanctuary, together with the flying buttresses which allow the nave aisles to be flooded with light.

During the French Revolution, the revolutionaries wanted to tear down the church, but the Benedictine Verdier-Latour managed to persuade them that it would be an excellent gathering place for the people.

In 1884, the western façade with its spires and the last span of the nave were finally completed, with full respect for construction methods of the Middle Ages.