The First Cathedral West of the Mountains
Near Bardstown, Kentucky
In the center of Bardstown stands a building that has no business being in Kentucky. The Basilica of Saint Joseph Proto-Cathedral was the first Catholic cathedral built west of the Allegheny Mountains, dedicated in eighteen nineteen by Bishop Benedict Joseph Flaget, the first bishop of the Diocese of Bardstown. Flaget had traveled from France to lead the church in the American interior, and he hired John Rogers of Baltimore to design a structure worthy of the mission.
The building was constructed from locally quarried limestone, with bricks fired in Nelson County and timber cut from the surrounding forests. When it opened, it was among the largest buildings in all of America. The interior holds one of the most extraordinary collections of European religious art found in any American house of worship.
King Louis-Philippe the First of France, who had spent years in American exile before ascending to the throne, donated works here. King Francis the First of the Two Sicilies sent a seventeenth-century painting by the Italian baroque master Mattia Preti as a personal gift. Pope Leo the Twelfth also contributed to the collection.
The result is a cathedral interior hung with Flemish and Italian canvases that belong in a European museum. Pope John Paul the Second elevated the building to a minor basilica in two thousand one. It remains a working parish church and one of the most unexpected treasures in Kentucky.
