THE BASILICA OF OUR LADY OF THORNS

Founded in 988 this Benedictine church combines Romanesque and Gothic styles in all harmony. The square tower and the nef are the xie century, the transept and the choir of xiiith. Successive changes and additions have largely transformed the original makeup. According to legend, a pilgrim from Jerusalem in the seventh century had the vision, after witnessing a miracle, of the creation of a Benedictine monastery. However, the tenth century had to wait for the monks of Evron to decide to build a great church. In the xiith century, a noble return from Santiago de Compostela erected a chapel of Arabo Byzantine style next to the abbatial church. In the thirteenth century, the monks of Evron replaced their Romanesque church with a Gothic church. They will not succeed in completing the work and will leave a mid-Romanesque church, Mi-Gothic, as a panoramic testimony of medieval medieval architecture over the centuries. The conventual buildings destroyed in the eighteenth century will be replaced by a neo-classical building.