Chapelle Saint-Antoine et diables de Bessans

Bessans

At Bessans, a high village of the Maurienne, the chapel of Saint-Antoine and its painted decoration date from the late Middle Ages. The interior, listed as a historic monument, is covered on three walls with some forty juxtaposed 15th-century panels telling the life of Christ — but transposed into everyday mountain life: the objects, costumes and buildings are those of medieval Bessans, making these paintings a veritable peasant comic strip of the faith. A fresco also adorns the outside wall. In counterpoint to this piety grew the village's most astonishing tradition: the devils of Bessans. In November 1857, Étienne Vincendet, a sculptor, cantor and sacristan, took his revenge on the parish priest, who had abolished the annual meal offered to the cantors, by placing on the presbytery window a wooden figurine of a devil carrying off a priest under his arm. The priest sent it back to him, and the carving travelled thus from window to window until a passer-by, taken with it, bought it: the prank became a tradition. Since then, the carvers of Bessans have cut polychrome devils, horned and grimacing, from Swiss stone pine, and they have become the emblem of the village — still carried on today by Fabrice Personnaz's workshop, Le Chapoteur.

Getting there : 200 rue du Cimetière, 73480 Bessans, a village of the Haute-Maurienne on the D902 between Val-Cenis and Bonneval-sur-Arc; open in summer (in August, Tuesday to Saturday 10am–12pm and 3pm–6pm, Sunday 3pm–6pm), admission 2 €, guided tours for groups (04 79 05 96 05).

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

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