St-Laurent-du-Mont (Argelès-sur-Mer)
The small former parish church of Saint-Laurent-du-Mont ( Catalan Sant Llorenç del Mont ) is located in the municipality of Argelès-sur-Mer in the Pyrénées-Orientales department in the Occitania region of southern France .
location
The church is isolated and somewhat hidden at about 200 meters in the Valmy forest, about five kilometers south of Argelès.
Building history
The church was built on the site of a pre-Romanesque building that was consecrated to St. Peter ( St-Pierre ) and was first mentioned in 981. Today's church, consecrated to St. Lawrence , dates back to the middle of the 12th century and was consecrated in 1164 by the Bishop of Elne . The building was not changed after its completion and thus offers the - rather rare - sight of a completely uniform Romanesque parish church . The place and thus also its parish were given up in the 16th or 17th century; Nevertheless, the church was visited by pilgrims from the area once a year on the patronage festival (August 10). In 1990 extensive security and renovation measures took place.
architecture
The church building consists of two parts: a nave and a somewhat smaller semicircular apse . All outer walls are - technically perfect - built from only slightly hewn natural stone layers. A two-part bell gable rises above the unadorned west facade , the peal of which was probably removed when the village was abandoned.
The entrance portal on the south side, which is architecturally exceptionally richly designed for a parish church, with its multiple recessed portal walls with semicircular archivolt arches and a - slightly gable-shaped - stone lintel beam is remarkable. The latter shows a seemingly primitive head, the religious and / or disaster-warding ( apotropaic ) meaning of which is unclear. The tympanum field , the capital stones and the archivolt arches are otherwise completely undecorated. Only small fighter plates separate the masonry pillars of the vestments from the archivolts.
The single nave, about 7.50 meters long, 3.20 meters wide and covered by a barrel vault , is only exposed to light through a small - formerly unglazed - window opening in the west; the slightly retracted apse, which is about 1.80 meters deep, has an additional east window.
See also
The two dolmen Cova de l'Alarb and Dolmen des Collets de Cotlliure (without capstone) are only about 1,000 meters away on foot.
Web links
Coordinates: 42 ° 31 '17 " N , 3 ° 1' 10" E