Chapelle Saint-Jacques-le-Majeur

Saint-Alban

Property of the Order of the Temple in the Middle Ages, this chapel passed around 1307, at the dissolution of the Templars, to Duke Jean III of Brittany, who had it largely rebuilt: west gable, window and porch-tower with carved niches, still without its spire to this day. A local legend explains this unfinished state by fairies who, having come to build the tower, are said to have abandoned the work on discovering that death existed in these lands — a tale to be taken, of course, as legend and not as attested fact. What is well documented, on the other hand, is the strategic position of the site: built beside the ancient Roman road from Carhaix to Alet (Saint-Malo), the chapel also lies on the route of the Tro Breiz, the great tour of the seven founding saints of Brittany, and welcomed Breton and English pilgrims on their way to Compostela. It came through the wars of the League at the end of the 16th century, suffering pillage and violence — a priest was even murdered there in 1595 — before being closed under the Revolution and reopened in 1804. It preserves a 14th-century polychrome statue of Notre-Dame du Bon Voyage, a Way of the Cross by Saupique and a bell of 1617, witnesses to a history of pilgrimage unbroken since the Middle Ages.

Getting there : Free access, chapel beside the old Roman road from Carhaix to Alet, today a walking route

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

Ambient sound