St. Pierre Cathedral

St. Pierre Cathedral cathedral in Geneva, Switzerland, was built as a Roman Catholic cathedral, but became a Reformed Protestant Church of Geneva church during the Reformation. It is known as the adopted home church of John Calvin, one of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation. Inside the church is a wooden chair used by Calvin.

Although this has been the site of a cathedral since the fourth century, the present building was begun under Arducius de Faucigny, the prince-bishop of the Diocese of Geneva, around 1160, in Gothic style. The interior of the large, cruciform, late-gothic church was stripped of its rood screen, side chapels, and all decorative works of art, leaving a vast, white-washed interior that contrasts sharply with the interior of surviving medieval churches in countries that continued to be part of the Roman Catholic Church. A Neo-Classical main facade was added in the 18th century. In the 1890s, Genevans redecorated a large, side chapel adjacent to the cathedral's man doors in polychrome, gothic revival style. The German painter Konrad Witz painted an altarpiece, the so-called St. Peter Altarpiece, for the Cathedral in 1444, now in the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva, which contains his composition, the Miraculous Draught of Fishes.

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