Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Notre-Dame-de-Kérinec chapel, located in Poullan-sur-Mer in the Finistère, is a Catholic religious building that began construction around 1280, as evidenced by the arches in the middle of the choir and their absence of a salient net. Its interior architecture, characteristic of the École de Pont-Croix, is distinguished by pillars in bundles of columns and capitals decorated with lanceolate leaves. The exterior, sober, is redesigned at the end of the 14th or 15th century, period at which the bedside and the cruises are pierced by large Gothic windows and the tower-wall erected. The latter, an innovative type for the period, combines a square pile surmounted by a corbelled platform and an octagonal arrow belfry, considered one of the oldest in Brittany.

The chapel rises on an earlier pagan site, marked by a sacred spring (now fountain in the 16th century) and close to a menhir and a dolmen located 500 meters east. The furniture includes statues made of polychrome wood (Vierge à l'Enfant, Saint Sebastian) and an exterior 16th-century calvary-chair, used during pardons. The belfry and arrow, rebuilt in the seventeenth century after a collapse due to lightning, complete the late additions, while the sacristy dates from the nineteenth. Ranked a Historic Monument in 1914, the chapel bears witness to the architectural evolution of Brittany, mixing Romanesque heritage, Gothic innovations and local traditions.

The surroundings of the chapel also house a hospital disused in 1746, intended to accommodate poor pilgrims, as well as a dolmen and a three-metre-high triangular menhir. The annual pardon, celebrated on the third Sunday of July, perpetuates a religious tradition rooted in the country of Penn Sardin. The association Les Amis de la Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-Kérinec now ensures the preservation of this heritage, opened to visit according to a seasonal calendar.

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