During one of our visits, we will strive to take you among monuments that the Knights Templar saw and some, where they gathered.
What is more visible in Touraine than our churches, Loches and Saint Ours collegiate are places we will make you discover during this weekend.
But let the city of Loches present it to us:
Located in the heart of the royal city of Loches, close to the royal home, the
Saint-Ours collegiate beautifully crowns the old town.
Dedicated originally to Notre-Dame, the Collegiate of Loches was built to house a precious relic: the belt of the Virgin.
It was then served by a college of twelve canons, hence the title of collegiate. It was during the Revolution that it became parish church Saint-Ours, taking again the status and the term of a church today destroyed, located below.
Founded around 965 by the Count of Anjou Geoffroy Grisegonelle, father of the famous Foulques Nerra, it is to the latter that we owe the construction of the building in the first half of the eleventh century. A century later, the prior Thomas Pactius did important work of expansion of the collegiate that gives him the face that we know today.
True Romanesque splendor, the building dates mainly from the 12th century.
Its architecture includes two exceptional elements dating from the middle of the 12th century:
A polychrome portal carved with characters and fantastic animals characteristic of the bestiary novel, considered the best preserved of Touraine,
two hollow octagonal pyramids called "dubs", which cover the nave, constituting a unique feature in France. These contribute to reveal "the strange and wild beauty" of the monument to which Viollet-le-Duc was referring.
It is also in this building that is exposed the remarkable recumbent, recently restored, Agnès Sorel, favorite of King Charles VII, recently restored.
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