Stained Glass Window at the Cathedral of Saint Bartholemew, La Rochelle

La Rochelle Cathedral (Cathédrale Saint-Louis de la Rochelle) is a Roman Catholic cathedral, and a national monument of France since 1906, located in the town of La Rochelle.

The Diocese of La Rochelle (Diocese of La Rochelle-Saintes from 1852) was created in 1648 but the first stone of the new cathedral was not laid until 1742, by which time the architect who drew up the plans, Jacques Gabriel, was dead; the work was supervised, from a distance, by his son Ange-Jacques Gabriel. Although still not complete, it was consecrated anyway in 1784. The structure is a rather bare Neo-Classical one. The cupola has paintings by William Bouguereau, a native of the city.

Attached to the chevet of the present cathedral is the late medieval Gothic bell tower of the church of St. Barthélémy (Saint Bartholomew), first constructed in 1152 by monks from the Ile d'Aix, the rest of which was destroyed by the Huguenots in 1568. The tower, on one of the highest points of La Rochelle, was used as a gun tower against the besieging army of Louis XIII in 1627.