Église Sainte-Marie

Romanesque-Gothic parish church at the heart of the old town

The parish church of Sainte-Marie is the dominant building in the old centre, a sturdy Gothic structure with a Romanesque core and a heavy square belfry. Inside, the nave is unexpectedly tall for a small-town church, with simple ribbed vaulting and a handful of polychrome statues in the side chapels. There is usually a notice in the porch about visiting hours and the next concert.

Around the church the streets are narrow and quiet, with stone houses, painted shutters, and a few cafés on the small square in front. The whole ensemble has the unforced charm of a country market town that has been getting on with its business since the Middle Ages.

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A story
The church preserves a fragment of a fortified medieval tower behind its apse — a reminder that this was a frontier zone during the Hundred Years' War, with English-held Aquitaine on one side of the Lot and the French crown on the other. Most of the building was rebuilt in the fifteenth century after the war finally ended.