The most beautiful religious buildings Haute-Vienne

Hemmed in the district of La Motte, this elegant Gothic building dominates the city of its 65 metres. It was built from 1364 onwards. Its octagonal steeple/porch is topped with a antifoudre boule boule ball, a real emblem of the regional capital before the Benedictine station is built. She replaced another wooden sphere of 600 kg installed in 1914 and removed two years later by the Germans. On each side of the south portal, two (very eroded) granite lions gave their names to the church and raised their guard: they come from Gallo-Roman funeral monuments and served in the Middle Ages to delimit the courts of the Vicomté and the St. Martial Abbey. A «hall» plan and the inclined pillars of the th century stained glass windows on the life of Saint-Jean-Baptiste and the life of the Virgin, and the socket containing the relics of Saint Martial, preserved here since the demolition of the Basilica.

Parish church of the Assumption of the Virgin. The crypt is what remains of a primitive place of worship. The construction extends from 1019 to 1220, both Romanesque and Gothic. Notice the high relief on the southern portal representing the Virgin to the Child. Note two paintings, La Virgin surrounded by a angels concert of Pieter van Mol (1512 th century) and a copy of a fresco executed by Raphaël in at the Vatican on the initiative of Pope Jules II. There are beautiful sculptures. In the course of the work.

Built in the 1591 th century, partly destroyed during the Hundred Years War, rebuilt in 1489, destroyed in 1673, it was, from 1681 to, recorded from a part of its ruins and decorated with beautiful woodwork. The church includes a Romanesque part, the square of the transept surmounted by the steeple, the choir and a Gothic part, the western portal of the th century. You enter the perimeter of the church by a beautiful th century granite portal with six voussures, with a great number of outstanding invoice characters. A garden occupies the location of the nave and its bas. There will be debris debris, tents, a toe point on which, according to legend, Saint Martial would have been linked to slam him during his passage to Ahun. On the right, entering the church, a limestone altarpiece from the end of the th century. But the remarkable element is the ensemble of woodwork executed from 1673 by Simon Bauer, faire sculptor. The altarpiece that controls the autel covered in its lower leather part of Cordoba is made up of high columns adorned with pampre with birds, snakes and snails. It is gathered at stalls by a richly decorated intermediate etc. The 26 stalls are decorated with a variety of fantaisie. The fence of the choir is surmounted by two Christ attached to the same cross, one turned towards the east, the other (crowned) to the west. In the middle of the choir, a remarkable stand made up of a octagonal base column and two made-back lions, apparently, in the same oak piece. In the chore, two polychrome wooden statues, shrines, a wooden cross of the th or th century and another in boxes of the th century (guided tours all year round: 05 55 62 53 93).