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Origin and history

The Saint-Gilles Chapel, located in Bezonvaux, is a building of the first half of the 20th century, designed as a commemorative shelter chapel. It pays tribute to the nine Meusian villages destroyed during the First World War, declared "dead for France". These villages, including Bezonvaux, have not been rebuilt, but their administrative existence has been maintained as a memorial. The chapel, built between 1930 and 1934, symbolizes the memory of the victims and these missing communities.

The building, from plane to cross, consists of a porch, a nave pierced with bays forming a non-scoring transept, and a circular choir. Its masonry mixes rough rubble linked to the hydraulic lime mortar and Lerouville cut stone for neat parts. The original outer coating, "a tinted tyrolean raw coating", contrasted with the white stone, an effect attenuated by the present light grey coating. The porch, adorned with a broken arch with triple windows evoking medieval style, also incorporates Art Nouveau elements, such as the overturned consoles of the piedroits.

Inside the porch, wall paintings signed Tollard depict religious symbols: the dove of the Holy Spirit, a blessing divine hand, and a chrism surrounded by the Alpha and the Omega. A wrought iron door, with geometrical and cross motifs, separates the porch from the nave. The chapel, financed by titles of war damage, is the work of architect Marcel Delangle. It perpetuates the memory of the villages destroyed by the fighting in Verdun, while embodying architectural and memorial resilience.

The Saint-Gilles Chapel is classified as a Historic Monument by order of 15 December 2021 and includes in its protection the ground of the plot and the wall of the adjacent cemetery. This site, owned by the municipality of Bezonvaux, remains a poignant testimony of the consequences of the Great War and of the desire to preserve the memory of the missing places. The location, though symbolic, is marked by a cartographic precision considered "passable" (note 5/10), perhaps reflecting the difficulties associated with a territory profoundly transformed by history.

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