Nouméa Cathedral

Nouméa Cathedral (French: Cathédrale Saint-Joseph de Nouméa) is a Roman Catholic church in Nouméa, New Caledonia. It is dedicated to the Saint Joseph. The cathedral has been the seat since 1966 of the Archdiocese of Nouméa, to which the former Vicariate Apostolic of Nouvelle-Calédonie was elevated.

The cathedral, dedicated to Saint Joseph, the husband of the Virgin Mary, was built between 1887 and 1897 as the seat of the Vicar Apostolic of Nouvelle-Calédonie (created in 1847) with convict labour to plans by a former prisoner, a certain Labulle. It was blessed on 26 October 1890 by Père Xavier Montrouzier, almoner of the hospital, opened on the following All Saints Day, and consecrated in 1893 by the Vicar Apostolic of Fiji, Monseigneur Julien Vidal, before the façade and the bell towers were completely finished.

The cathedral has a Latin cross ground plan, and is 56 m (184 ft) long (five bays with sexpartite ogival vaults for the nave, two straight bays and five polygonal bays for the choir), with a transept 36 m (118 ft) wide, on a south-west–north-east axis. 15.5 m (51 ft) high, the building is flanked on its south-west façade to either side of the porch by two towers 25 m (82 ft) high with stone balustrades at the top. (Originally it was intended to add spires to the tops of the towers, but the idea was abandoned given the prevalence of cyclones). The two towers, the buttresses and the surrounds of the doors and windows are in dressed stone (typical of the buildings constructed by the convicts), while the other walls are of rubble masonry mortared with lime. The woodwork and the ogival vaults are in red kauri wood. The roof is made of corrugated metal.

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