Octogone de la Maison-Dieu de Montmorillon

Montmorillon

In the courtyard of the former Maison-Dieu of Montmorillon stands a monument that long baffled scholars: an eight-sided rotunda, unique in Europe in this form, whose mysterious little statues on the doorway — a Visitation, an archangel, naked women representing lust? donors? — fed every hypothesis before historians recognised it as a funerary chapel raised around 1107. Its story begins in the Holy Land: returning from the First Crusade, the lord Robert du Puy founded here, around 1080–1085, a monastery-hospital to take in the poor, the sick and pilgrims — the Maison-Dieu (House of God). In the hospital cemetery, this octagon inspired by the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem was then built, as if to bring a piece of Christ's tomb to the banks of the Gartempe. The building stacks two worlds one above the other: below, the crypt-ossuary, the "charnel house" where bones cleared from the cemetery were laid when space ran out; above, the chapel where prayers were said for the dead, beneath an Angevin Gothic vault. The number eight is itself a message: in medieval symbolism it heralds the "eighth day", the day of resurrection. Tradition has it that Robert du Puy rests in his foundation. Capped with a dome in the 17th century, ruined and then restored in 1997–1999 with its lantern, the Octagon — listed as early as 1840 — remains one of the most enigmatic Romanesque funerary monuments in France.

Getting there : Impasse de la Maison-Dieu, 86500 Montmorillon, within the precinct of the former Maison-Dieu, to the south-west of the town. Visits: enquire at the town hall (05 49 84 30 00). Coordinates taken on the Maison-Dieu site.

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

Ambient sound