St-Maclou Church

The Église St-Maclou is a Gothic church located just across the street from the cathedral in Rouen.

St-Maclou was built in 1200 and rebuilt 1437-1521. The tall lantern tower was added over the crossing in 1868.

Built in a Late/Flamboyant Gothic style, the Church of St-Maclou stands on a square full of picturesque old Norman crooked-timbered buildings.

The west front features five portals of equal height and a magnificent step-gabled porch, whose two doors bear fine 16th-century wood carvings of biblical scenes, probably by Jean Goujon.

Inside, pictures dating from June 4, 1944, document St-Maclou's destruction and its subsequent restoration during the war.

The Aître St-Maclou, immediately to the east of the church, was a cemetery for plague victims and an integral part of the St-Maclou complex. It's now a tranquil garden of the Fine Arts school, but the lower story of the surrounding buildings still bears the deathly decorations of its darker past.