Monastère de Cimiez: A Franciscan Monastery in Nice, France
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- County of Provence, Duchy of Savoy, Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Monastery
On this page8 sections
History
Monastère de Cimiez is a Catholic Franciscan monastery in Nice, France, on Cimiez Hill, dedicated to the Assumption of Mary, the Catholic belief that Mary was taken into heavenly glory at the end of her earthly life. Its present church belongs to the fifteenth century, while the complex grew from an earlier Benedictine foundation associated with Saint-Pons Abbey.
Benedictine beginnings
The monastery’s early history is linked to Saint-Pons Abbey, a Benedictine foundation in Nice established around the ninth century by Siagrius, Bishop of Nice, with monks from Lérins Abbey in Provence. The chapel of Our Lady of Cimiez may have formed part of a Benedictine foundation dating from about the same period. It is explicitly mentioned in a charter of Saint-Pons dated 30 December 1010.
Saracen attacks, a medieval European term for Muslim raiders or forces from the Mediterranean region, damaged or destroyed the early complex. Monks from Saint-Pons Abbey rebuilt it during the eleventh century, establishing the foundation from which the later monastery developed.
Franciscan transformation
On 15 November 1546, Saint-Pons Abbey transferred the chapel and adjoining land to the Friars Minor of the Observance. The Observance was a reform movement within the Franciscan Order, the religious tradition associated with Saint Francis of Assisi. The Franciscans had lost their convent after the Siege of Nice in 1543 and enlarged and transformed the Cimiez complex after receiving the property. Further modifications continued over the following centuries.
The monastery formerly received Nice’s penitential confraternities in procession. These religious associations crossed the Roman arena after setting out from the Chapel of Saint Anne. The Franciscans of Cimiez also administer the parish of Sainte-Marie-des-Anges, serving Cimiez and Vallon des Fleurs in Nice and the neighboring commune of Falicon. A fraternity of four friars from Assisi provides the parish service.
Brother Marc, later known as Fray Marcos de Niza, was the best-known Franciscan associated with Nice. Tradition holds that he gave the name of the founder of his order to the site of the future city of San Francisco in California.
Protection and restoration
The monastery complex was classified as a historic monument on 4 June 1993. Its former garden and cemetery received separate historic-monument protection on 19 May 1994. A major restoration campaign carried out with the regional cultural-affairs authority began in January 2013 and was completed on 5 February 2014. The work concerned the roofs, cloister, and façades.
Remains
Church and paintings
The present complex includes the fifteenth-century Church of Our Lady of the Assumption. Its interior contains three major works by Louis Bréa, a late-fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century painter associated with the artistic tradition of Nice and the wider Ligurian-Provençal region. The paintings are a Pietà from around 1475, a Crucifixion from around 1512, and a Deposition. Together, they span approximately forty years of Bréa’s artistic activity.
The complex also contains a Franciscan museum devoted to Franciscan life in Nice from the thirteenth century onward. It complements the church by presenting the religious community’s history in the city.
Cloister and garden
The sixteenth-century cloister forms part of the monastery’s surviving architectural group. It is used for classical-music concerts during the Musical Nights of Nice and, in summer and fine weather, for Sunday Masses.
The garden around the complex was formerly the monks’ kitchen garden. A local tradition credits the Franciscan fathers with inventing mesclun salad by mixing different seeds and giving surplus seedlings to poor people in an espourtoula, a rattan basket with a handle shaped like an inverted bonnet.
Cemetery
A cemetery adjoins the church. It contains the graves of the painters Henri Matisse and Raoul Dufy, the writer Roger Martin du Gard, and members of the Goiran family, including François Goiran, a French general and mayor of Nice. Matisse and Dufy were major French modern artists, while Martin du Gard received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1937.
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