Chapelle de Saint-Martin-del-Fenouillar

English translation

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History

A charter of 844 mentions the existence of a chapel dedicated to Saint-Martin and specifies that it was located on the route leading from France to Spain by the Ecluse. This document would attest that the initial role of the edifice was to serve as a roadside sanctuary. The chapel is preceded, to the south, by a small enclosure, an old disused cemetery. It consists of a rectangular building that houses the nave, and a small square annex that forms the chevet. Nave and chevet are vaulted with a barrel vault slightly more outreaching in the former than in the latter. In the apse, the render is painted in fresco. Two fragments of a similar decoration were discovered in 1954 on the jambs of the triumphal arch and at the lower part of the walls of the neighbouring bay. The primitive altar which was in the apse was removed when it was transformed into a vestibule. A new altar, raised by two steps and backed against a partition, was erected at the western extremity of the nave. The west gable is surmounted by an arcade bell tower in black stone, recent. The rectangular chevet and the outreaching arches belong, in this region, to the pre-Romanesque period. The paintings date from the beginning of the 12th century.