A medieval treasure is hidden in the walls of Reims Cathedral, too many tourists miss it

The arch&eacute ologists have revealed a treasure of history buried in the cathedral of Reims.

Reims Cathedral is one of the French people's favourite monuments. The impressive 81-metre-high building, a masterpiece of Gothic art, has reigned over the city for over 800 years. Every year, 1.5 million visitors flock there to admire its collection of thousands of statues and its impressive ribbed vaults. Tourists from all over the world go there to admire Chagall's stained glass windows, few know that hidden in its depths, a little less than two meters below the visitor's feet, is a treasure buried since the Early Middle Ages.

It began in June 1995, when Walter Berry and Robert Neiss, after three years of intensive excavation, revealed the hidden side of Reims Cathedral. By penetrating under the paving of the central nave of the cathedral, 3 meters deep, by a narrow staircase that was difficult to access and Through underground passages strewn with stones, they discover the remains of a baptistery with a basin about ten meters on each side, a sort of rectangular swimming pool. It was located there for centuries, around the year 500, right in the middle of the building's heating system.

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The surprise was great when, while analyzing shards from the first half of the 5th century, archaeologists revealed the exact location of the baptistery of Clovis, king of the Franks from 482 to 511. “We can clearly see this basin in which the king of the Franks immersed himself at the end of the 5th century for his baptism. He had to go down three steps for this partial immersion and then he was sprinkled with water. of oil three times, for the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And then all around us are quite moving remains, Gallo-Roman on the one hand, and on the other hand of the “pale Christian church which preceded the cathedral of Reims” revealed to France Info Jocelyn Bouraly, administrator for the Centre des monuments nationaux du Palais du Tau. 

It was a luxurious baptistery as evidenced by the fragments of blue and green mosaics and the pieces of marble found all around, with 2,303 sculpted figures and impressive dimensions of 6,650 square meters and 122 meters long…

For the moment, only a few privileged people, archaeologists and historians from all over the world, have the privilege of observing this historical treasure, during regular excavations. Visitors who come to see the baptistery of Clovis will have to be content to meditate in front of a simple engraved slab placed on the ground, in the central nave, at the height of the 5th bay of the building which bears the following inscription: “Here, Saint-Remi, baptized Clovis, king of the Franks”. If the treasure is not yet open to the public “for the moment”, the historian Patrick Demouy, a specialist in the Middle Ages and the Cathedral of Reims, has suggested that France Bleu, in the series “The mysteries of the cathedral of Reims”, that it could be one day.