Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The former parish church of Villeloin, located in Villeloin-Coulangé in the Centre-Val de Loire region, dates from the 12th century. Today, only the choir, consisting of an apse and two straight spans, measuring about 9 meters long, remains. This vestige, built mainly in tuffeau, bears witness to the Romanesque architecture of the region. The walls, with the exception of the western wall in bellows (added after the destruction of the nave), have a regular apparatus resting on a seat of flat bellows. Six foothills speed up, decreasing in size as we move away from the old bell tower.

The frame, of the chevron-forming-farm type, with roll-up entrances, probably dates from the late 15th or early 17th century. Subsequent modifications included the laying of the rampants and a sommital cross in 1874, as well as the construction of a gable wall in rubble between 1873 and 1875 to close the choir. Two niches, once integrated with the missing nave, now frame the entrance door, alongside an angel probably from the abbey of Saint-Sauveur and a carved lintel of a cross in the 19th century. Inside, the crib and cul-de-four vaults, cracked and brushed, rest on masonated piles.

Ranked Historic Monument by order of February 9, 2022, the choir and its plot are fully protected. The site is located at the eastern entrance of the village, behind the communal cemetery and near the present church of Saint-Michel, from which it is separated by the departmental road D12. The building illustrates the architectural and liturgical evolution of a medieval place of worship, marked by redevelopments in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

External links