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Origin and history

The former convent of the Visitation Sainte-Marie de Carpentras was founded in 1670 by Canon Paul Dandré, of Saint-Siffrein Cathedral. A first community of three nuns, from Annecy, settled in a house in Isle 35, before acquiring the neighbouring buildings to enlarge the convent. The chapel, built in 1717, adopted a classical plan with a unique nave and a choir adorned with stucco carved by the Mazzetti brothers, Avignon artists. The convent, sold as a national property in 1796, then lost its original furniture.

During the Revolution, the community was dispersed and the site loti. In 1817, the Brotherhood of Grey Penitents bought the chapel to celebrate Masses and processions, especially for the Feast of God. Disused in 1936, it became a stone museum. The convent initially occupied a vast island between the streets of Saintes-Marie and the Brothers-Laurens, organized around a cloister with doric arches, partially preserved.

The architecture combines coated masonry and cut stone, with four-level facades, a square tower to the west, and vaulted galleries opening onto the cloister. The chapel, classified as Monument Historique in 2004, preserves decorations of the Mazzetti brothers, although its altar was dismantled after 1800. The site illustrates the evolution of religious buildings in Provence, between aristocratic foundations, revolutionary spoliations and cultural reallocations.

The convent also reflects the influence of the Order of Visitation, founded in the seventeenth century for women of the nobility, and its integration into the urban landscape of Carpentras, already marked by other communities (Carmelites, Ursulines). Its sale as a national good and its transformation into a museum in the 20th century testify to the political and social upheavals that affected the French religious heritage.

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