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Origin and history

The former convent of the Penitents of Rouen is located in the eastern part of the city. Originally founded in 1472 under the name of Sainte-Barbe-sous-Croisset in Canteleu by Rogerin Rabasse, the community asked from 1522 to settle in Rouen, without success. It was only in 1609 that they settled in the suburb of Bouvreuil, thanks to a gift from Martha de Rassent, the widow of Guillaume Aubert. In 1610, letters patent of Henry IV allowed them to transfer their convent from the Croisset to this suburb.

In 1612, an exchange with Monsieur de Babeaumes gave them a land on Rue Saint-Hilaire, where the first stone of the church was laid on 1 April. The convent was established there in May 1612, and the church of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette was dedicated in 1615 by Archbishop François de Joyeuse. The cloister, begun in the first half of the seventeenth century, was completed in 1625. Deleted from the Revolution, the site became a prison in 1795, the Maison François, after the demolition of the parish church of Saint Francis.

In the 19th century, the convent successively welcomed the Sisters of the Good Shepherd (1839-1865) and the Sisters of the Holy Angels until the Second World War. The chapel, rebuilt by Charles Robert in 1876, was destroyed in 1984. After 1945, the site houses a vocational high school, then rehabilitated by Massimiliano Fuksas (1989-1993), the regional environmental agency of Haute-Normandie until 2011. Sold in 2012 to a private developer, today there are only two wings of the cloister and a staircase, protected since 1984.

The protected elements include the ground floor and the first floor of the south and east wing facades of the cloister, as well as the northeast corner staircase. These vestiges bear witness to the 17th century Conventual Architecture and subsequent transformations between religious, prison and educational uses.

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