Genevieve is reputed to have converted Queen Clotilde and her husband, French king Clovis I to Christianity at the tomb of Saint Germain in Auxerre.

During the reconstruction following the Notre-Dame fire on the nearby Ile de la Cite, the cathedral's regular services have been moved to Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois.

That church was destroyed by the Normans in 886, rebuilt by King Robert II the Pious, and then underwent further construction in the 12th century.

The current structure is largely from the 15th century,[1] During the Wars of Religion, its bell, "Marie," was rung on the night of 23 August 1572, which signaled the beginning of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre.

[citation needed] During the French Revolution, the church was closed, pillaged, and converted into a barn for storing feed for animals, a printing shop, and a gunpowder factory at various times.

The building was returned to the Catholic Church in 1801, but suffered again during an anticlerical riot in 1831, when many paintings, funeral monuments, and windows were damaged or destroyed.

[citation needed] The church was nearly demolished twice; once under Louis XIV, who envisaged enlarging the Louvre palace and building a new facade in its place; and again under Napoleon III.

The only existing Romanesque elements, dating from the 12th century, are found in the lower portion of the bell tower, where it is attached to the south transept.

[6] It was originally the meeting place of the canons of the cathedral, who held their ecclesiastical court there, and was the classroom where pupils were instructed in the catechism.

The arches over the doorway are also crowded with sculpture dating to the end of the 14th century, depicting apostles, angels, the damned and the chosen, sages, and foolish and wise virgins.

[7] The lateral facade is also richly adorned with sculpture, including pinnacles and gargoyles, which also had the practical function of projecting rainwater away from the sides of the building.

[7] The most prominent element of the nave is the monumental set of carved wooden seats, created in 1684 for Louis XIV and the royal family.

Its Gothic architecture makes it the oldest part of the church interior, though it is overlaid with a considerable amount of Renaissance decoration, particularly the cannelures or vertical grooves of the columns, typical of the classical style.

[citation needed] The ambulatory is the passageway that circles the church, enabling parishioners to walk around to the chapels even when a service is going on.

At the entrance to the sacristy is a major work of the 17th century painter Sebastien Bourdon (1616–1671), "Saint Pierre Nolasque receives the habit of the Order of Notre Dame of Mercy."

Painted at the height of his career, it displays his particular skill at blending architecture and crowds of figures in rising levels.

[11] The Chapel of the Virgin, usually located in the east end of a cathedral, is found near the entrance of the church on the south collateral aisle.

The figure depicts her clothed only with her long hair, and holding three loaves of bread, which, according to her legend, allowed her to live for sixty years in the Egyptian desert.

It was restored in the neo-Gothic style beginning in 1840, with new stained glass by Etienne Thevenot (1840), modelled after the windows of the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, with scenes depicting the life of Christ.

It contains one of the most notable works of art in the church, a Flemish carved retable made in about 1515 in Antwerp, near the end of the Middle Ages, when Flanders was at its artistic height.

The carved sculpture represents scenes from the Old and New Testament, and figures from all ranks of society, from kings and nobles to soldiers and peasants in traditional Flemish costume.

Some accounts say that the present organ was transferred from Sainte-Chapelle in July 1791, where it had been built twenty years earlier by François-Henri Clicquot, with a case designed by Pierre-Noël Rousset in 1752.

The smaller choir organ, in the center of the church, was built in 1838 by John Abbey, enlarged in 1900 by Joseph Merklin, and reharmonized in 1980 by Adrien Maciet.

Most of the medieval and Renaissance stained glass was destroyed during the Revolution and in the 1831 riots, but a few notable examples can still be found in the side chapels.