Chapelle Saint-Guen

Vannes

In Vannes, in the Saint-Guen district, a simple Gothic pointed-arch doorway, with slender columns and capitals, is all that survives of a priory founded nearly a thousand years ago. Around 1025–1040, Duke Alain III of Brittany endowed a priory placed under the dependence of the abbey of Saint-Gildas de Rhuys, one of the oldest monastic foundations in Brittany. The chapel built on this priory, whose present doorway dates from the 13th–14th centuries, bears on its keystone a carved escutcheon with a chevron. The history of the place spans several centuries: according to a local tradition, the philosopher and theologian Peter Abelard, then abbot of Saint-Gildas de Rhuys, is said to have stayed here in the early 12th century — an account to be ranked as legend, for want of direct evidence. A better-established episode took place in 1453: the commissioners charged with investigating the canonisation of the Dominican Vincent Ferrer took refuge in the chapel to escape an outbreak of plague that was striking Vannes. Sold as national property in 1791, the priory and its chapel were destroyed at the Revolution; only the doorway, spared, was registered as a monument historique in 1939. A modern parish church, built in the 1960s, today perpetuates the dedication to Saint Guen on the same site.

Getting there : Free access (doorway visible from the public space, Saint-Guen district of Vannes).

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

Ambient sound