Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut

Trédaniel

Few rural chapels in the Côtes-d'Armor can boast of having drawn, in a single day, a crowd as considerable as Notre-Dame-du-Haut at Trédaniel: according to 19th-century accounts, the pardon of 15 August — the Breton pilgrimage festival — gathered up to 10,000 pilgrims here, some of them come from ten leagues around. Many brought their sick horses, which were led three or nine times round the chapel while rosaries were recited, the Virgin being invoked against equine ailments. Seven healing saints shared the other intentions: Saint Méen against fever, Saint Mamert against colic, Saint Yvertin and Saint Ujeanne against headaches, Saint Hervé for cattle and blindness, Saint Lubin, and Saint Hubert against rabies. A miraculous fountain in the neighbouring valley, fallen into disuse after the Revolution, was restored after a cure was reported there. According to the founding legend, illustrated by a stained-glass window of 1880, a young man from the Léon, about to be hanged by brigands at the Croix-Fleurie, called on the Virgin and was saved; he raised the chapel in fulfilment of his vow. Built in the 14th century and altered several times up to the 19th century, Notre-Dame-du-Haut remains a living and well-documented testimony to popular medicine and rural Breton devotion.

Getting there : Free access to the placître (chapel green); chapel open for the pardon of 15 August.

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

Ambient sound