Basilique Notre-Dame-de-Bonne-Garde de Longpont-sur-Orge

About

Notre-Dame-de-Bonne-Garde Basilica is a minor basilica dedicated to Notre-Dame in the French commune of Longpont-sur-Orge and the Essonne department. The site of the church is preceded by a chapel dating back to the time of the Christianization of the Île-de-France, built at the oldest place of Marian worship in the region: according to legend, a statue of the Virgin was already venerated by Gaulish druids. The church was founded in 1031 by Gui I de Montlhéry and his wife Hodierne de Gometz.

Thirty years later, they built a priory and asked the bishop to offer church and priory to Cluny Abbey. Nothing of Cluny's first branch in the Paris region remains: the French Revolution destroyed it. The parts of the church built until the end of the 11th century were apparently also lost.

The Gothic portal of the 1220s is famous for its artistic quality and iconography; The eardrum represents the crowning of the Virgin. The nave and the lower side are Romanesque and probably date from the first quarter of the 12th century, but were only later vaulted. The transept and choir were demolished in 1819...