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It consists of a basilica divided into three naves by twenty-four columns of Greek marble with Romano-Byzantine capitals. Of old it had an atrium, but this was removed in the sixteenth century, as was the ancient apse in the eighteenth.
Adjoining the choir on the right is a sacristy occupying a small structure, and to the westward is a fragmentary edifice known as the Basse OEuvre, one of the oldest existing buildings in France; a Romano-Byzantine work, variously stated as of the sixth to eighth century and forming a portion of the original church which occupied the site of the present Cathedral.
The early foundations of the old abbey date far back into antiquity, but the present cathedral dates only from the thirteenth century. Commonly considered as of Gothic style, it is in every way more suggestive of the late Romano-Byzantine type, or at least of the early transition.
As has been finely said the whole church is "gaunt" and unbeautiful; it is a depressing mixture of styles, Roman, Romano-Byzantine, and Gothic; and in studying its one fine detail, a photograph or a drawing is much more satisfactory than an hour's tantalising effort to see the original.
The really distinctive southern influence is to be noted in the Romano-Byzantine nave, the exterior of which, so far as the western front is concerned, is far more notable in the rigidness and austerity of its lines, than by any richness of ornamentation or decoration. Nothing could be more simply plain than this portal, and the wall and gable which surmount it.
Then Justinian introduced the Byzantine which was grafted upon the Roman, producing a characteristic and fascinating though barbaric combination. This was the Romanesque, or Romano-Byzantine, in the North of Italy generally being recognized as the Lombard style.
When, however, it is compared with the grand group, it is relegated immediately to the second rank. The interior, far more than the exterior, shows a visible disparity of unified style. Romano-Byzantine, transition, and ogival are all found in the nave and choir, with the flamboyant, of the fifteenth century, in the ornamental tracery of the windows of the transepts.
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