Basilique Saint-Seurin

This guide to the Basilique Saint-Seurin in Bordeaux follows a stone bishop's chair beneath the choir and the legend of Roland's horn, the ivory Olifant said to have cracked as the warrior blew it dying in a mountain pass in 778. It traces how the relic turned the church into a pilgrimage draw, spawning a walled district, the sauvete, with its own trades and right of asylum. You'll hear about the sixth-century sarcophagi still crowded into the crypt below. Look for the carved columns holding up that underground chamber.