Chapelle Saint-Libert de Tours: A Former Romanesque Church
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.1
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Classical, Medieval, Modern
- Civilizations
- Carolingian, Roman
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Chapel
On this page12 sections
History
Chapelle Saint-Libert de Tours is a former Romanesque church in Tours, France, built mainly during the twelfth century. It stands beside the Loire at the northeast corner of Caesarodunum, the ancient city associated with Tours, and partly incorporates the fourth-century fortified enclosure. The surviving building replaced an earlier church whose date and precise relationship to the site remain uncertain.
Early churches and medieval foundations
A charter issued in 919 records a land exchange made between 866 and 877 by the canons of Saint-Martin and Hugh the Abbot, Count of Tours. The property covered about 3,600 square metres and contained a church, an enclosure wall, and a postern, or small secondary entrance. It may have become the first chapel of the Counts of Tours, near the Tour Feu Hugon, probably their earliest residence. Another interpretation connects the property with a refuge inside the city walls used by monks during Viking incursions. Under this hypothesis, monks from Saint-Martin and Marmoutier may have built or reinforced a chapel there, although this remains unconfirmed.
The church mentioned in the ninth century was probably Carolingian, belonging to the period of the Carolingian rulers in the eighth and ninth centuries. It may already have been dedicated to Libert, a sixth-century religious figure associated with the Tours region and recognized as a saint by Gregory of Tours. The dedication could date from the seventh, ninth, or twelfth century, but the earlier building’s location, date, and predecessors are not established. No secure evidence confirms a Roman building or a fifth- or sixth-century refuge or oratory on the site.
The first explicit medieval reference to worship dedicated to Saint-Libert appears in the twelfth century under the name “oratory of Saint-Léobard.” A deed of 1192 stated that the oratory had been founded by the vendor’s ancestors. The surviving Romanesque structure is generally dated to about 1150, although its original form and sequence of construction remain uncertain, and some architectural details suggest a date toward the end of the twelfth century.
Ownership and changing uses
The chapel was initially connected with the Counts of Tours and later entered the domain of the kings of France, as records from the fourteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries indicate. It successively belonged to the domain of Preuilly Abbey, lay owners, and the Oratorian priests, members of a Catholic congregation devoted to communal priestly life and pastoral and educational work. The church was deconsecrated in 1705 and converted to private industrial use. This caused extensive alterations and damage, but the conversion probably also helped preserve the structure.
From the eighteenth century into the middle of the nineteenth century, the building was used for saltpeter production. Saltpeter, or potassium nitrate, was an important ingredient in gunpowder, and its extraction included the removal of tuffeau for manufacture. The premises later formed part of the Chaslon saltpeter works. After the previous owners’ bankruptcy, they passed to the Estevou family in 1788. Carpenter Urbain Marnay used the former chapel as a wood warehouse from 1853.
From 1875, Marnay’s heirs leased the building to manufacturers of soft drinks, liqueurs, and canned food. The cannery purchased it in 1922. It may also have been used for growing mushrooms. From 1968, it served as a garage and storage space. An architect acquired it in 1980, and in 1989 it was sold to the grocer Henri Lhote, who used it as a warehouse.
Protection and rehabilitation
The Archaeological Society of Touraine identified the building as local heritage requiring preservation in 1859. Its nave was added to the supplementary inventory of historic monuments on 2 December 1946. By then, sheds and a separate house built over the forecourt from the nineteenth century had largely concealed the chapel. The Archaeological Society of Touraine acquired it in May 2011 and began a rescue, archaeological investigation, and rehabilitation project later that year.
Preliminary work in the second half of 2011 included an archaeological assessment, clearance, infrastructure work, demolition of the abandoned municipal house on the forecourt, and removal of part of the northern shed roof. Excavations took place between November and December 2011, September and December 2012, and March and May 2013. They removed roughly two metres of accumulated fill above the original floor and recovered about 2,500 pieces of faience and pottery, evidence of nearby craft activity and useful dating material for the successive layers. The investigations confirmed worship at the site before the present chapel was built, although they did not establish a complete sequence of earlier buildings.
Fifty-two skeletons found during the work were reinterred in the chapel on 6 May 2013 in a ceremony blessed by Aubertin, Archbishop of Tours. Rehabilitation was completed in 2015, and the restored building was inaugurated on 13 May 2016. It now serves as the society’s headquarters, research and archive centre, meeting venue, and setting for cultural events.
Remains
The surviving structure consists chiefly of a nave, with the choir and bell tower no longer standing. Including the former choir, the church originally measured about 24 metres in length; before restoration, the surviving part measured 17.5 metres. Its original floor lay at least two metres below the later accumulated surface. The walls are built from dressed tuffeau, a local limestone, and average one metre in thickness. Buttresses reinforce the building, which does not have a stone vault.
The Romanesque chapel
Before rehabilitation, the chapel was approximately 8.6 metres wide and 10.15 metres high, with an interior about 17 metres long and 6.5 metres wide. After restoration and extension, it measures about 19 metres long, 7 metres wide, and 12 metres high. A long-pitched slate roof covers the building. Its timber framework was rebuilt in the fifteenth century, and dendrochronology, the dating of wood through its annual growth rings, placed the surviving oak structure in 1483. The twenty-seven trusses form the shape of an inverted ship’s hull.
Two pointed-arch doorways lead into the chapel, one on the south side and one on the west. The southern entrance is now closed. Reinforcing masonry around the western doorway suggests that it may once have carried a porch and a raised gable that functioned as a bell tower, although the gable may instead have been demolished. Along the lateral façades, a cornice or moulded band beneath the eaves incorporates carved modillions, small projecting blocks supporting or decorating the cornice. The northern examples include human and female heads, monstrous figures, geometric designs, and plant forms.
Three windows have semicircular arches made from seven wedge-shaped stones, or voussoirs. The northern windows were restored during the rehabilitation. The more elaborately decorated southern façade contains a Romanesque ecclesiastical lavabo, a basin used by clergy for ritual handwashing, and now faces a private garden. The northern buttresses, removed during the industrial period, were reconstructed, while the western tuffeau façade was stripped of its cement coating and the windows and modillions were repaired or replaced.
Archaeological features beneath the chapel
Gallo-Roman wall
The northern doorway occupies part of the Gallo-Roman city wall. Excavation exposed a section about 14 metres long, 4 metres thick, and 5 metres high. The postern described in the 919 charter was not located because this part of the wall had been dismantled during the nineteenth century. The surviving wall is conserved beneath contemporary glass protection.
Earlier altar and choir
Excavation revealed the foundations of an altar and a choir barrier that may date from about 940 to 1020, at the end of or shortly after the Carolingian period. Two column bases also predate the twelfth-century chapel, and a trace marks the beginning of the lost choir or apse, the rounded or semi-circular end of a church. The altar seems to have remained in approximately the same position for a long period. The original shape of the choir is unknown, and its destruction may have resulted from the nineteenth-century widening of Rue de la Bretonnerie.
Bell foundry
The excavations also exposed the remains of a bell foundry. Its purpose is uncertain because the chapel appears never to have had a bell tower. It may have supported an activity connected with the rebuilding of Tours Cathedral, which began in 1170. The foundry remains are preserved beneath glass along with the section of city wall.
Burials and sculptural remains
A 90-centimetre-high statue of a bishop was found lying on its back. It appears to have been ritually buried in the fifteenth century and had lost its head and hands. An unspecified ring was also recovered during the archaeological assessment. Forty burials, probably belonging to one family of local notables, included adults and children carefully placed in shrouds and probably date from the sixteenth century. The family’s identity is unknown. The bishop statue was incorporated into the refurbished interior, while the excavated human remains were reinterred in 2013.
Industrial traces and modern adaptation
Industrial use left a boiler base probably associated with the cannery. Saltpeter production damaged the interior wall surfaces, while the buried lower sections remained intact. During rehabilitation, the lean-to that had altered the roof slope was removed, allowing the roof to be repaired and completed. A city-built forecourt and stairs now provide access to the western entrance and the original ground level.
An administrative extension was added on the east side in place of the lost choir, increasing the usable space. Inside, two levels of northern mezzanine galleries house the Archaeological Society of Touraine’s collection of about 13,000 glass plates. Modern thermoformed stained-glass windows by Jacques Loire were installed in early May 2015. The refurbished chapel contains offices, archive and research areas, meeting spaces, and a cultural-events venue with computer-controlled sound and video equipment and seating for about 150 people.
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