The former cathedral of Saint-Vincent de Mâcon, also known as "Vieux Saint-Vincent", is located on the right bank of the Saône, in the historic heart of Mâcon. Built in the 11th century and extensively rebuilt in the 13th. Mâcon's original cathedral became national property during the French Revolution. Its choir and nave were then methodically dismantled, leaving the towers of the werstern section and the porch as the only visible remains of the vast cathedral omplex.

Today, the monument presents itself as a ruin, the interpretation of which has been rendered exremely complex by the demolition of the great Gothic edifice and the many alterations since the Wars of Religion, paticularly during the restorations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The truth of the ruin, in all its apects and through the many interventions, is the lesson that the former Saint-Vincent cathedral give us. Through its shortcomings, it expresses the turbulent history of Mâcon, its diocese, and the war and violence it suffered. In order to understand its different states, and to realise the scale ands strength of the original architecture, it must be reconstructed through knowledge, through an educational trail through the ruins, and through digital mediation, using models, images and explanations.

The aim is to strictly conserve the existing remains, with any additions designed to protect the remains or contribute to the educational tour of the ruins, in a contemporary, minimalist language that does not imitate the layout or materials of the past.
 

/ Partly classified as Historic Monument