Home > Tourism France > Tourism New Aquitaine > Tourism Gironde > Tourism Saint-Émilion > Église collégiale de Saint-Émilion

Built early in the twelfth century to the community of canons of St. Augustine, construction continued until the sixteenth century. It presents some novel features of Perigord, as its two domes on pendentives that voûtent its second and third bays, yet most architectural elements visible today is related to the Gothic style.

It is now the parish church of the town. A series of concerts is planned each year by the association Aemilianus. This huge church is among one of the largest of the Gironde.

We can not leave the church without having admired the statue of Saint-Valery, local saint and protector of wine, carefully preserved by the door of the sacristy. This statue, in the sixteenth century polychrome wood, is a true ethnographic document with the accuracy of facial features and details provided; clothes and sickle are keeping wine at that time.

The cloister of the Collegiate Church
Can be accessed by the church to the cloister or the Tourist Office. From the cloister, there are two Romanesque walls of the church with their flat buttresses. The cloister is a square of thirty feet square, whose galleries are covered with a wood frame. They are supported by arches arch themselves supported by twin columns, most of which have been restored. Column groups at the four corners of the gallery are surmounted by capitals decorated. The first monastery, built in the Romanesque period, there remain only the walls and openings on the east and south, the rest of the monument was rebuilt in the Gothic period.