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Origin and history

The church of Saint-Denis, located in Alix, was built in the 3rd quarter of the 18th century (circa 1768-1770), under the impulse of Louise de Musy de Veronin, Prioress of the chapter of the Canonesses. The building, integrated into an old seminary, is distinguished by its inverted orientation (chorus to the west) and a square facade surmounted by a triangular pediment. Inside, the arched nave in the middle of the hanger, elongated in 1873, houses a circular tholo-shaped choir decorated with 18th-century stalls and a 19th-century pulpit. A crypt, formerly reserved for priories, was transformed into a cold room by the current hospital.

The history of the site dates back to the eighth century, with the foundation of a mixed priory. In the 13th century, the Benedictine chapter of Saint-Denis, protected by Philippe Auguste and Guichard III de Beaujeu, was established. The nuns, neighbouring the lords of Marze, suffered the ravages of the Wars of Religion (16th century), especially under Protestant troops of the Baron des Adrets. In 1598, Henry IV helped them to recover their lost property, but the convent declined until the mid-18th century.

The reconstruction of the church and chapter was launched thanks to the subsidies of Louis XV, obtained by Louise de Musy. A commemorative plaque (1768) marks the laying of the first stone. After the Revolution, the priory, which became a national good, was redeemed in 1807 by Cardinal Fesch, who installed a seminary there. It was enlarged in 1841 and was abolished in 1904 and transformed into a hospice and then a retirement home in the 1980s. Major modifications of the church, entrusted to architect Drevet (1865-1873), include the extension of the nave and the addition of a pulpit.

The current protections concern the central rotunda (classified in 1984) and the entire building (registered in 2023), with the exception of certain parts such as crypt. The church, a property shared between the municipality and a public health institution, bears witness to the successive transformations: from Benedictine priory to seminary, then to modern hospital, while preserving architectural elements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

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