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Origin and history

The church of Saint Martin-au-Parvis de Laon, built in the 12th and 13th centuries in the department of Aisne, is a hybrid architectural testimony. Its nave, dating from the beginning of the 12th century, contrasts with its raised Gothic choir, built in 1531–32 and illuminated by splinters and a quadrilobed rosette. Close to the cathedral, it served as an exhibition place for the remains of personalities before their funeral, such as those of Philibert de Brichanteau or Cardinal de Rochechouart. A modest parish, she suffered from a lack of resources, forcing the bishop to seek in 1526 the confraternity of Saint Anne to finance liturgical objects and reparations.

The history of the church turned with the Revolution: closed on April 2, 1791, it was sold as a national property on August 13 of the same year to Étienne Hivard, who converted it into a hotel (the Petit-Saint-Martin), then into a ballroom. In the 20th century, its interior was set up in a court of the Prudsmen in the 1970s, after a restoration supervised by the architect of the Historic Monuments Maurice Berry. Filed in the inventory in 1927, it illustrates the functional changes in religious buildings, from worship to secular uses.

From an architectural point of view, the church reveals a marked heterogeneity: the Romanesque nave, coated and covered with flat tiles, contrasts with the choir of the sixteenth century, arched with dogives and covered with slates. Western elevation, in opus spicatum, was pierced in the 18th century to add a rose and a portal. These successive changes reflect the adaptations of the building to the changing needs of society, while maintaining traces of its medieval and modern past.

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