Collégiale Notre-Dame de Melun

Melun

On the Île Saint-Étienne, the original heart of Melun encircled by the Seine, King Robert the Pious founded between 1016 and 1031 a collegiate church dedicated to Our Lady, in the shadow of the castle where the first Capetians liked to stay: the royal foundation sealed the dynasty's hold on this strategic lock on the Seine, wrested a few years earlier from the treachery that had delivered it to the Count of Blois. Twelve canons prayed there for the king; the nave, the aisles and the base of the bell towers, already standing in 1031, are among the oldest witnesses to Romanesque art in Île-de-France. It was for this collegiate church that Jean Fouquet painted around 1450 one of the most fascinating pictures of the 15th century: the Melun Diptych, commissioned by Étienne Chevalier, treasurer to Charles VII and a son of the town. On one side the donor presented by Saint Stephen, on the other a Virgin and Child of unreal coldness, surrounded by red and blue angels, who tradition holds bears the features of Agnès Sorel, the king's beautiful mistress, who had died shortly before. The diptych watched over Chevalier's tomb for more than three centuries, until the impoverished chapter sold it around 1775: the two panels are today in Antwerp and Berlin, the scattered glory of the old Capetian collegiate church.

Getting there : 1 rue de la Courtille, Île Saint-Étienne, Melun. Melun railway station 15 minutes' walk away; parking on the quai de la Courtille. Church listed as early as the 1840 list.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound