Collégiale de Candes-Saint-Martin

About

La collégiale Saint-Martin de Candes is a former collégiale located in Candes-Saint-Martin in the western part of the French department of Indre-et-Loire, in the Centre-Val de Loire region. A first church dedicated to St.Mauritius was built by St.Martin in one of the first rural tower parishes he founded and where he died in 397. It later became a pilgrimage church, even in the absence of relics of the saint.

In 1050, the church of Candes was mentioned as "college" and its chapter had twelve canons. Since the old church of Saint-Maurice was ruined, the current church of Saint-Martin de Candes was built between 1175 and the middle of the 13th century. The construction site spans several decades, but it is very modest in terms of the importance of the building, whose architecture is largely inspired by the Gothic style of the West.

It is characterized by a very rich carved decoration that adorns its transept and nave but, above all, by a monumental porch open on the northern flank of the latter. The addition, in the 15th century after the Hundred Years War, of devices making this college one of the few fortified churches of Touraine, reinforces its singularity...