The latest portion is of early pointed character, and not later in date than _circa_ A.D. 1180 to 1200, and it was at the same time that this was erected that the greater part of the enormous substructure forming the porch was also completed. The aisles throughout the church are vaulted with quadripartite vaults, the three western bays alone having ribs. In the two western bays there are engaged shafts both in the porch and above it in the nave, but the rest of the piers are of the simplest plan, large and generally cruciform in their section, save at the crossing, where the arches are carried on coupled detached shafts. There is much elaborate sculpture introduced in the capitals of the pilasters and columns of the nave, but it is nowhere of any very high merit, and is so inferior in delicacy and beauty to the sculpture of the same age to be seen on the banks of the Rhone, that I should attribute it to a native school of sculptors acquainted, probably, with none but inferior Roman sculpture, from which they endeavoured to develope a style for themselves. A clerestory of wide and rude round-headed windows, one in each compartment, lights the series of domes in a very effective manner.
The arches across the nave are very bold, and, in the wall above them, an opening is pierced under each of the cupolas. As is generally the case, however, in churches covered in this way, very little is seen of the real vault in any general view of the church, these transverse arches only, with the quasi-pendentives above them being seen. The pendentives are true semi-domes, constructed in alternate courses of dark and light stone, and the difference between their plan and the square angle in which they are placed is skilfully concealed by detached shafts, with capitals placed under the pendentives.