The Church of St. Remi escaped severe damage until the middle of 1918. The bombardment of September 4, 1914, injured one of the tapestries depicting the life of St. Remi, and destroyed a fine painting: _The Entry of Clovis into Rheims_. The bombardment of November 16, 1914, wrecked the apsidal chapel of the Virgin, bringing down the vaulting, destroying the key-stone and pointed arches, crushing the altar beneath a heap of ruins, smashing the magnificent windows of the apsidal gallery, and destroying the priceless 12th century stained-glass depicting _Christ crucified between the Virgin and St. John_. The Church narrowly escaped destruction when the Hôtel-Dieu Hospital was burnt down in 1916. From April, 1918, it was marked down by the German batteries. The roof was entirely burnt, and the dummy vaulting of the nave collapsed. Of the fine 15th century timber-work nothing remains, but parts of the lofty 13th century vaulting over the choir and transept withstood the bombardment. The treasure, tapestries, sacristy doors, storied tile-flooring of the chapel of St. Eloi, the old stained-glass of the lofty windows, and the apsidal windows round the gallery of the first storey, were saved by the Historical Monuments Department.
The tomb of St. Remi is intact. The relics of the saint which, at the request of the Archbishop of Rheims had not been disturbed, were removed by the vicar of the parish at the time of the final evacuation of the town. The reliquary was taken away by officers at a later date, while the church was burning.
The Apse was rebuilt under Pierre de Celle in 1170, in early Gothic. Five three-sided radiating chapels arranged in three stages, one behind the other, have flowing and elegant lines, broken by the enormous projections of the buttresses which were added at a later period.
This apse is one of the earliest religious edifices in France, in which flying buttresses were employed.
The latter, very simple in design, rest on outside fluted columns detached from the wall of the apse. This is one of the last examples of fluting, as applied to columns, the process disappearing generally with the introduction of pointed architecture, only to reappear at the Renaissance.