Fontaine de dévotion de Locmaria

Melrand

A few hundred metres from the famous reconstructed Village de l'An Mil, the chapel of Locmaria hides within its enclosure one of the finest devotional fountains in the Morbihan. Raised in 1574, it is carved like a small altarpiece in stone: a pointed-arched niche shelters a Crucifixion sculpted in high relief, while a finial and the ten stars of the Kervéno crown the whole. Below, a wash-house basin collected the water that the inhabitants came to draw after imploring the Virgin or the protecting saints for the health of their children and livestock, a practice common to the whole Vannes country. Statuettes once adorned the corner colonnettes and the inner niche; they have disappeared over the centuries, but the Flamboyant Gothic structure, comparable to the neighbouring fountains of Saint-Bieuzy or Saint-Nicolas-des-Eaux, remains intact. Listed as a historic monument as early as 1928, it bears witness to that rural Breton fervour in which chapel and fountain formed a single place of recourse: one prayed inside and drew the blessed water outside, in a gesture where Christian devotion and ancestral rites tied to living waters answered one another without contradiction.

Getting there : About 2 km south of the village of Melrand, on the road to Locmaria; parking near the chapel, not to be confused with the neighbouring Village de l'An Mil

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

Ambient sound