Saint-Aulais-la-Chapelle - Saint-Jacques

Saint-Aulais-la-Chapelle, a village with a population of not even 300, hosts three Romanesque churches! One of these is Saint-Jaques in the tiny Hamlet of Conzac. Erected within the 12th century as a Cluniac priory church when pilgrims took a break here on their way to Santiago de Compostella. They still had about 1000 kms to walk from here.

The priory and the church got severely damaged during the Hundred Years' War and the Wars of Religion. The church, once built on the blueprint of a Latin Cross, lost one arm of the transept, the facade and a large part of the nave. The nave got rebuilt in the 17th century, but now is shorter than it was originally. The Romanesque apse and the crossing, seen here, survived the times.