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Cocathédrale Notre-Dame-de-l'Annonciation de Bourg-en-Bresse

Bourg-en-Bresse

Dimensions
In the centre of Bourg-en-Bresse, place Georges-Clemenceau, visible from the town hall; the three great stained-glass windows of the choir are 14 metres high and 2.5 metres wide
Period
Marian chapel served by priests, attested in 1258; church begun in 1505 by Jean de Loriol, choir completed in 1507; seat of the short-lived diocese of Bourg from 1515 to 1535 (created on 21 May 1515, suppressed in 1516, re-established in 1521, definitively suppressed on 4 January 1535); choir stalls c. 1530; bell tower begun in 1534, completed in 1694, pulled down in 1794 and rebuilt in the 20th century; listed historic monument (classé) on 21 December 1914; co-cathedral of the diocese of Belley-Ars since 1992
What stands there
A Black Virgin carved, according to legend, from the willow in which a shepherd had found the image of Mary

Legend has it that a shepherd one day found an image of the Virgin Mary in a willow near the Porte d'Espagne; carried to the parish church of Saint-Pierre de Brou, it is said to have returned of its own accord to the place where it had been found. An oratory was built there, and the statue of the Black Virgin is said to have been carved from the wood of the felled willow. History, more soberly, attests in 1258 a chapel served by priests from Bourg, which Count Aymon of Savoy endowed with a donation in 1343. In 1505 Jean de Loriol, Bishop of Nice and a native of Bresse, set about making it a great church; Margaret of Austria, widow of Philibert of Savoy since 1504, obtained the transfer of the parish of Saint-Pierre de Brou to Notre-Dame. The choir was completed in 1507. Bourg then briefly became an episcopal city: on 21 May 1515 Pope Leo X created a diocese whose first bishop was Louis de Gorrevod, and it was he who celebrated the first episcopal Mass. The see did not withstand politics: suppressed after the Concordat of 1516 between Francis I and Leo X, re-established in 1521, it disappeared for good in 1535. From that time remain the oak choir stalls carved around 1530, attributed to Pierre Mochet of Geneva, in which Flamboyant Gothic mingles with Renaissance ornament, and the window of Saints Crispin and Crispinian, patron saints of tanners and shoemakers, dated 1526. The bell tower, begun in 1534, was not completed until 1694; in January 1794 the representative Albitte ordered it to be pulled down and its three bells taken down to be melted into cannon.

Wikipédia — Cocathédrale Notre-Dame-de-l'Annonciation de Bourg-en-Bresse ↗

Further reading

Getting there : 10 place Georges-Clemenceau, in the town centre. Free entry (to be checked: the Montagnes du Jura page does not say); open from 7 am to 7 pm according to Guide Tourisme France (to be checked). Worth seeing: the altarpiece of the Black Virgin, the choir stalls, the stained-glass window of Saints Crispin and Crispinian (1526) and the choir windows. Restoration work (roof, stained glass, clock) began in 2024: visiting conditions to be checked.

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

See it on the map OpenStreetMap Directions

Ambient sound

Cocathédrale Notre-Dame-de-l'Annonciation de Bourg-en-Bresse
Chabe01 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Nearby

In the same department

All places — Ain (11).