The ancient chapel of the Visitation--the convent of the first monastery founded by St. Francis and Ste. Jeanne--immediately adjoins the cathedral. Christianity first came to Annecy in the fourth century, with St. Emilien. For long after its foundation the see was a suffragan of the ancient ecclesiastical province of Vienne. To-day it is a suffragan of Chambéry. The rather ordinary cathedral of St. Pierre has no great interest as an architectural type, and is possessed of no embellishments of a rank sufficiently high to warrant remark. It dates only from the sixteenth century, and is quite unconvincing as to any art expression which its builders may have possessed. The episcopal palace (1784) adjoins the cathedral on the south. [Illustration] XVIII CATHÉDRALE DE CHAMBÉRY The city of Chambéry in the eighteenth century must have been a veritable hotbed of aristocracy. A French writer of that day has indeed stated that it is "the winter residence of all the aristocracy of Savoie; ... with twenty thousand francs one could live _en grand seigneur_; ... a country gentleman, with an income of a hundred and twenty louis d'or a year, would as a matter of course take up his abode in the town for the winter." To-day such a basis upon which to make an estimate of the value of Chambéry as a place of residence would be, it is to be feared, misleading. Arthur Young closes his observations upon the agricultural prospects of Savoie with the bold statement that: "On this day, left Chambéry much dissatisfied,--for the want of knowing more of it." Rousseau knew it better, much better. "_S'il est une petite ville au monde où l'on goûte la douceur de la vie dans un commerce agréable et sûr, c'est Chambéry._" Savoie and the Comté de Nice were annexed to France only as late as 1860, and from them were formed the departments of Savoie, Haute-Savoie, and the Alpes-Maritimes. Chambéry is to-day an archbishopric, with suffragans at Annecy, Tarentaise, and St. Jean de Maurienne. Formerly conditions were reversed, and Chambéry was merely a bishopric in the province de Tarentaise. Its first bishop, Michel Conseil, came in office, however, only in 1780. The cathedral is of the fourteenth century, in the pointed style, and as a work of art is distinctly of a minor class. The principal detail of note is a western portal which somewhat approaches good Gothic, but in the main, both inside and out, the church has no remarkable features, if we except some modern glass, which is better in colour than most late work of its kind. As if to counteract any additional charm which this glass might otherwise lend to the interior, we find a series of flamboyant traceries over the major portion of the side walls and vaulting. These are garish and in every way unpleasing, and the interior effect, like that of the exterior, places the cathedral at Chambéry far down the scale among great churches.