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Origin and history

The church of Notre-Dame-du-Lac, built at the end of the 12th century in the Thor (Vaucluse), is a masterpiece of Provencal Romanesque art, marked by a strong ancient inspiration. Ranked as a historic monument in 1840 among the first 934 protected sites in France, it is distinguished by its southern porch evoking an arch of triumph, its carved capitals (palmettes, eagles, human faces) and its heptagonal bedside rhythmized by canned pilasters. Its bell tower, which had been unfinished for centuries due to funding problems, was finally equipped with a lantern in 1834 and repaired in the years 1830-1840, remaining disproportionate to the building.

The legend attributes its name to a statue of the Virgin miraculously discovered in a pond by a bull. Under the governance of the abbey Saint-André de Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, the church housed four confraternities (Saint-Esprit, Saint-Sacrement, Notre-Dame-du-Scapulare, Sainte-Anne), offering members the privilege of being buried under the nave — 80 people rested there before the ground was concreted. The interior, of a height of 16 meters, surprises by its dimensions (35 m long) for a village church, mixing Romanesque nave vaulted with warheads and elegant choir with alternating hexagonal and cylindrical columns.

The church was the victim of a spectacular flight in 1994: eleven golden wooden statues of the 17th and 18th centuries (including a Virgin with the Child and Saint Roch) disappeared without break-in, probably stolen by accomplices locked inside. Five of them (saint Mark, Saint John the Baptist, Saint Barbe, Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Dominique) were found in Italy between 1999 and 2001, restored and resettled in 2013 with a security system. One of the statues, sold 50,000 euros to a collector via a Neapolitan antique dealer, illustrates the extent of the traffic in sacred art.

The site has 3,500 lapidary marks — a record in Provence — engraved on the interior and exterior stones, bearing witness to the activity of medieval taskrons. The cross, without transept, is surmounted by a dome decorated with a rare tetramorph (symbols of the four evangelists) and illuminated by an oculus. To the west, a stand reserved for men (mounted in 1950) overlooked the nave, whose asymmetric walls (baths to the south, blind wall to the north) reflect liturgical adaptations.

Ranked in 1840, the church enjoyed a recent appreciation: in 2018, the association Les amis de Notre-Dame du Lac was created to promote this heritage, followed in 2019 by a sound and light show projected on its northern facade. Its architecture, combining ancient reminiscences (Greek friezes, capitals with acanthe), Gothic innovations (crossed by warheads) and neo-Roman elements (lately completed), makes it an exceptional testimony of stylistic transitions in Provence.

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