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Origin and history

Saint-Nicolas de La Ferté-Vidame Church, located in the Eure-et-Loir department in the Centre-Val de Loire region, is a baroque religious building built between 1658 and 1659. It was erected on the ruins of an ancient church that became a Protestant temple during the wars of religion, at the request of Claude de Rouvroy de Saint-Simon, father of the famous memorialist Louis de Rouvroy de Saint-Simon. The latter, along with his wife Marie-Gabrielle de Durfort, were buried in a vault within the church, before their coffins were desecrated in 1794 by revolutionaries.

The architecture of the church is distinguished by its south facade adorned with two terracotta sculptures depicting St Peter and St Paul, protected by a layer of lime milk. The building houses a remarkable movable heritage, with twelve elements listed as historical monuments, including eight paintings, an 18th-century tabernacle, and a bell of 1769. Notable works include La Resurrection de Lazare and La Crucifixion, painted by Lucien Jonas in 1944, as well as a Virgin with the Child of Adolphe Yvon.

The church also preserves a funerary slab in the vault of the Saint-Simon, recalling the memory of Louis de Saint-Simon, a peer of France and author of Memoirs, as well as that of his wife and other members of their families. Ranked a historic monument in 1976, the church bears witness to the religious and aristocratic history of the region, marked by the conflicts of religious wars and the upheavals of the French Revolution.

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