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Origin and history

The church of Notre-Dame de la Garoupe, located on the plateau of the Garoupe in Antibes, is a religious building of Provencal Romanesque style built in the 14th century. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea and is close to the chapel of Notre-Dame des Seven Pains as well as the lighthouse and semaphore of La Garoupe. This site, an ancient oppidum ligure, has always had a religious vocation, moving from Roman cults dedicated to Selene to a Christian oratory dedicated to St Helen in the fifth century.

In the Middle Ages, a first chapel was erected, followed by around 1520 by the construction of a convent of the Cordeliers, whose sanctuary was dedicated to Notre-Dame de la Garde thanks to a gift from René de Savoie. The present church houses two naves dedicated to two Madonnas: Notre-Dame de la Garde, whose statue adorned with a golden altarpiece thrones in the right nave, and Notre-Dame de Bon Port, patron saint of the sailors, carved in a fig tree trunk and holding a three-mast. These two figures symbolize the dual spiritual and maritime protection of the place.

The interior of the church is richly decorated, with frescoes of the twentieth century, including one by Jacques-Henri Clergues (1953) evoking the passage of Pope Gregory XI to Antibes in 1376 and the gift of René de Savoie. The choir houses a baroque altarpiece of 1710, restored in 2017, and about 300 ex-voto, the oldest dating from 1506, showing thanks for rescues at sea or protections against plague. Unlike many churches, it was spared by revolutionaries.

Every year, a traditional procession descends the statue of Notre-Dame de Bon Port to the cathedral of Antibes, the first Thursday in July. The sailors, barefoot and in blue and white clothing, thus perpetuate a ritual dating back to the sixteenth century, when the invocation of the Virgin would have driven the plague out of the city. Pilgrimages on this site date back to the year thousand, and its millennium was celebrated in 1981.

Classified as a historical monument since 29 October 1926, the church has benefited from recent restorations, including a blessing in 2016 by Bishop André Marceau of Nice. It remains a place of major devotion for sailors and a symbol of the religious and maritime heritage of Antibes.

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