Notre Dame de Mantes

The former collegiate church of Notre-Dame in Mantes-la-Jolie is a Roman Catholic parish church on the Seine west of Paris and counts as one of the key milestones of early French Gothic. Built in the 12th and 13th centuries, it is in plan and elevation a smaller sister of the Paris Notre-Dame: twin-tower facade, three-aisled nave with galleries and sexpartite ribbed vaulting. Claude Monet painted the west front several times in the 1880s. In 1840 Prosper Merimee had it classified as a monument historique. After a long restoration it is open again and a popular day-trip stop out of the capital.