NOTRE-DAME CATHEDRAL AND ITS TREASURY

It's impossible to take two steps in the city without encountering a remarkable religious building, listed as a Unesco World Heritage Site. Considered one of Western Europe's finest monuments of religious art, the building proudly imposes its five bell towers, symbols of the city, on the Tournai landscape. Built from the ^12th century onwards, the present-day cathedral replaces several other religious structures, traces of which can still be seen in the subsoil. It is a masterpiece of Scaldian or Tournai Gothic, a transitional Romanesque-Gothic style that gives an unprecedented impression of height compared with Romanesque churches, and is a precursor of the elevation fever that was to characterize the Gothic style thereafter. Indeed, one of the cathedral's distinctive features lies in its architecture: the nave and transept, bristling with five towers, are Romanesque, while the choir, built in the ^13th century, is in the purest Gothic style. The cathedral is home to several chapels and numerous statues, sculptures and decorations from the ^12th, ^13th and ^14th centuries, including a statue of the Virgin Mary, the cathedral's patron saint.

The stained glass windows are well worth a look, starting with the magnificent rose window. The stained glass windows known as "des privilèges" have recently been restored, as has the magnificent rood screen separating the choir from the transept. Built during the Renaissance, it evokes a series of scenes from the Old and New Testaments. The edifice is currently undergoing a gigantic restoration program following a tornado in 1999. Work on the Romanesque nave is now complete. Restoration of the five towers and the transept is nearing completion. Work on the Gothic choir will then be considered. The cathedral will remain open to visitors during the works, and a 100-metre palisade surrounding the site will show both visible and invisible parts of the edifice. The development of the neighborhood goes hand in hand with this restoration.

The cathedral's treasury is probably one of the richest in Belgium. It includes ^13th-century Mosan silverware, such as the shrine of Notre-Dame by Nicolas de Verdun, numerous ivories and manuscripts, and a ^14th-century tapestry from Arras once used to decorate the choir. Since 1247, a reliquary has held the last remaining fragments of Saint Eleuthère, one of the church's patron saints.

You can also admire Pierre-Paul Rubens' La Libération des âmes du Purgatoire (The Liberation of Souls from Purgatory ).