The Cité Episcopale, or cathedral close, takes up two sides of place Formigé, the marketplace and heart of both contemporary and medieval Fréjus. It comprises the cathedral flanked by the fourteenth-century bishop's palace, now the Hôtel de Ville, the baptistry, chapterhouse, cloisters and archeological museum. Visits to the cloisters and baptistry are guided (April–Sept daily 9am–6:30pm; Oct–March Tues–Sun 9am–noon & 2–5pm; €4 including entrance to museum); access to the main body of the cathedral is free (9am–noon & 4–6pm).The oldest part of the complex is the baptistry, built in the fourth or fifth century and so contemporary with the decline of the city's Roman founders. Its two doorways are of different heights, signifying the enlarged spiritual stature of the baptized. Bits of the early Gothic cathedral may belong to a tenth-century church, but its best features, apart from the bright diamond-shaped tiles on the spire, are Renaissance: the choir stalls, a wooden crucifix on the left of the entrance and the intricately carved doors with scenes of a Saracen massacre, protected by a wooden cover and only opened for the guided tours. Far the most beautiful and engaging component of the whole ensemble, however, are the cloisters. In a small garden of scented bushes around a well, slender marble columns, carved in the twelfth century, support a fourteenth-century ceiling of wooden panels painted with apocalyptic creatures. Out of the original 1200 pictures, 400 remain, and subjects include multi-headed monsters, mermaids, satyrs and scenes of bacchanalian debauchery. The Musée Archéologique on the upper storey of the cloisters is an archeological museum, whose star pieces are a complete Roman mosaic of a leopard and a copy of a double-headed bust of Hermes.
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