Ninety seconds on Cathédrale Saint-Pierre d'Annecy
Go in for the organ: Annecy’s cathedral has bare walls, so a mighty nineteenth-century instrument is what holds your eye.
The front mixes two styles. It is Renaissance in its flat columns and pediment, yet it keeps two pointed Gothic windows and a round Gothic rose above the door, modelled on one at Geneva’s cathedral.
The link to Geneva is real: the church was built for Franciscan friars and almost at once became the provisional cathedral of the bishops of Geneva, who had fled the Reformation to Annecy.
Inside, the Gothic nave is severe and the walls are bare, so the fittings stand out. The pulpit is carved wood resting on an eagle, the columns end in ornate capitals, and the stained glass shows Saint François de Sales, the local saint.
The organ is the main event. Finished in 1842 and since restored, it has more than 2,000 pipes and weighs about ten tonnes.
Most of the visit is one walk up the nave and back. Go in by the main door and walk straight up towards the choir, pausing at the pulpit and the windows on the way.
At the choir, turn round to see the rose window above the door you came in by. Then work back down the church and look for the organ.
This is a working church, so keep your voice low, and if a service is on, keep to the back.
The cathedral stands up a quiet side street, so it is easy to walk straight past on a first loop of the old town. Save the address in your map app before you set out, and look for a Renaissance front with a round window above the door.
Explore the rest of Annecy
Come for a lake clean enough to swim in from the town lawns, with mountains rising straight from the far shore. The old town at its head…
Home of the Counts of Geneva and later the Dukes of Genevois-Nemours, the castle was abandoned as a residence in the 17th century after…
A long, deep lake ringed by mountains, its water clear since a ring of sewers took the shoreline towns' waste away from it. A free grassy…