Gare de Limoges-Bénédictins

Few provincial towns can claim a railway station that looks like a cathedral of the machine age, but Limoges can. The Gare des Bénédictins takes its name from the Benedictine convent that once occupied the site, and it was raised between the mid-1920s and 1929 for the Compagnie du Paris-Orléans to designs by the architect Roger Gonthier. It opened on 2 July 1929, replacing two earlier stations — a wooden shed of 1856 and a stone building of 1860 — and immediately became the emblem of a city better known for its porcelain.

What makes the building unusual is where it stands: not beside the tracks but on top of them. Gonthier set the station on a vast concrete deck, roughly 90 by 78 metres, thrown across the cutting where ten lines run below, so trains glide beneath the concourse rather than alongside it. Above the deck rise the two shapes everyone remembers — a copper-clad dome some 31 metres high over the waiting hall, and a slender campanile more than sixty metres tall, crowned with a small dome and a finial, with a clock on each face. The structure is a concrete skeleton dressed in pale limestone, and the whole composition hovers between Art Deco geometry and older ideas of civic grandeur.

Inside, look up and then look closely. The great hall is lit through stained glass by Francis Chigot, the Limoges master glassmaker, whose windows mix geometric patterns with foliage, including the chestnut leaves of the Limousin countryside. Alongside them stand allegorical sculptures by Henri Varenne. The station was listed as a historic monument in 1975, and when fire broke out beneath the dome on 5 February 1998, the copper cupola was rebuilt exactly as it had been — a sign of how much the building means to the people of Limoges, who treat it as a civic landmark as much as a place to catch a train. The tourist office runs guided visits of the building.

Getting there

The station stands on Place Maison-Dieu, about 1.6 km from the historic centre of Limoges. Limoges Airport (LIG) is roughly 7.5 km away. Intercités trains on the Paris–Toulouse line call here, along with regional TER services towards Poitiers, Angoulême, Brive-la-Gaillarde and Bordeaux, so the simplest way to see the building is simply to arrive by train.