Saint-Leu-d'Esserent Abbey

About

Saint-Nicolas Church is a Romanesque and Gothic church located in the commune of Saint-Leu-d'Esserent, in the French department of Oise and the Hauts-de-France region. It is an ancient priorial church, built between the middle of the 12th century and the turn of the 13th century for the monks of the Clunisian Priory of Saint-Leu founded in 1081 by Hugues de Dammartin. Replacing an old parish church, she will always assume the dual mission of a prioral and parish church, one of the monks acting as parish priest.

By its position at the edge of a plateau, it dominates the city and part of the Oise valley and its characteristic silhouette is visible from afar. The western massif is still Romanesque; completed around 1150, it corresponds to a less ambitious reconstruction project finally abandoned. Only a few years later, the construction of the present Gothic church began with the apse around 1160 and continued with the choir and the nave, completed about 1180 and 1200 respectively.

With 71 m in length in the work, and 21 m in height, the building strikes with its imposing dimensions, close to those of a cathedral. The purity of its architecture...