Église Sainte-Quitterie d'Aire-sur-l'Adour

Aire-sur-l'Adour

The hill of Le Mas, above the Adour, carried a Roman temple, then a baptistery: water flows there, and the Church made the spring that of Saint Quitterie, a young Visigothic princess who, according to the legend, beheaded for her faith, is said to have come and laid down her head there. In the 11th century the bishop of Aire Pierre I gave the church of Le Mas to Benedictine monks, come perhaps from La Chaise-Dieu, who built an abbey beside it; the Romanesque chevet, with its arcading on capitals — demons, basilisks, an adulterous woman punished by serpents — dates from the end of the 11th or the beginning of the 12th century. The Le Puy road passes at the foot of the hill, between Nogaro and Arzacq, and the pilgrims climb up to see the crypt: a vast chamber beneath the chevet, a mausoleum of the 4th-6th centuries, where in a niche rests a sarcophagus of white Saint-Béat marble, carved with scenes from the Old and the New Testament, which is said to have held the saint's relics until the 16th century. In 1569 the Protestant troops of Montgomery devastate the abbey and hammer off the faces of the Gothic doorway, where the Last Judgement, Adam and Eve and the scenes of Hell can still be made out. The abbey became a seminary in 1661, then a lycée; the church, the first monument classified in the Landes in 1840, was inscribed in 1998 among the components of the roads to Santiago de Compostela in France.

Wikipédia — Église Sainte-Quitterie d'Aire ↗

Getting there : From the centre of Aire-sur-l'Adour (on the N 124 Auch-Mont-de-Marsan), climb up to the quarter of Le Mas (signposted); car park near the church. The church is open during the day; the crypt is visited with the tourist office (guided tours in season) — enquire.

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

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