Abbey Church of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe
Abbaye de Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe
- UNESCO World Heritage
Interesting facts
- The Noah's Ark on the vault looks like a Viking longship without oars or sails, floating on water strewn with drowned bodies.
- Among the Genesis scenes, the painters slipped in Aesop's fable of the crow and the fox, right beside the story of Noah.
- The painters used a narrow palette of yellow and red ochre, green, white and black, with very little blue because the pigment was so costly.
- A cobalt-blue glass vessel used as a reliquary was found under an altar in 1866; it is the only intact known example of its kind.
- The abbey's founding charter was lost in 1598 during the Wars of Religion, which is why its origins remain uncertain.
- Huguenots sacked the abbey in 1562 and 1568, burning the medieval choir stalls, both organs, the relics and the archives.
- Around 1600 a lay abbot had the monastic buildings pulled down to sell the stone, and most of the cloister vanished.
- From 1611 another lay abbot drove out the monks and turned the church into his home, until Louis XIII had him evicted in 1640.
- According to tradition, the brothers Savin and Cyprian fled persecution in Macedonia and were caught and beheaded on the banks of the Gartempe.
- A full-size copy of the vault paintings by Pierre Valade covers the ceiling of an architecture library in the Palais de Chaillot in Paris.
Why it is worth it
The abbey church at Saint-Savin, on the banks of the Gartempe in the Poitou countryside, holds one of the finest and best-preserved ensembles of Romanesque wall painting in France, and it is often called the Romanesque Sistine Chapel. Its early history is obscure — the abbey is traditionally linked to the Carolingian reformer Benedict of Aniane — but the present church was begun in the eleventh century, and its paintings are generally dated to around 1100. It has been a World Heritage Site since 1983.
The building is impressive before you look up. It is some 76 m long, with a slender stone spire of the fourteenth century rising around 77 m above a porch tower. The nave, 42 m long and 18 m high, is lit indirectly through tall aisles in the Poitevin manner, and its barrel vault rests directly on two rows of tall columns painted in soft, marbled tones. It was built in two campaigns, which explains why the first three bays sit slightly out of line with the rest.
The vault is the heart of the church: about 412 m² of continuous painted surface telling stories from Genesis and Exodus, with God speaking to Noah among the best-known scenes. The figures are drawn with strong outlines and broad, flat areas of colour so that they could be read from the floor, and nine centuries later the colours are still surprisingly vivid. More paintings cover the porch, where the Apocalypse unfolds; the gallery above it, with scenes of the Passion; the choir; and the crypt, where the martyrdom of Saints Savin and Cyprian is told.
The survival of all this was a close thing. In 1820 lightning brought down the spire, cracking the nave vault, and in the 1830s the local mayor was about to whitewash the walls when the alarm was raised. Prosper Mérimée, then inspector of historic monuments, campaigned for years to save the church, and it was among the first buildings protected when the French list of historic monuments was created in 1840. A restoration completed in 2008 introduced fibre-optic lighting to protect the paintings. The monastery buildings now house a multimedia exhibition and a film on the painting techniques, and tablet-guided visits are available.
Getting there
Saint-Savin is a small town in the Vienne department; Poitiers is about 50 km away by road and Châtellerault about 37 km in a straight line. The nearest airport is Poitiers-Biard (PIS), about 43 km away. The easiest approach is by car; regional buses from Poitiers are infrequent.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Abbey Church of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe is a Roman Catholic church located in Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe, in Poitou, France. The Romanesque church was begun in the mid-11th century and contains many beautiful 11th- and 12th-century murals which are still in a remarkable state of preservation. The church is often referred to as the "Romanesque Sistine Chapel" and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1983.
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