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Origin and history

The chapel Saint-Julien, also known as the former leproserie of Saint-Julien-le-Chartreux, is located in Petit-Quevilly in the Seine-Maritime. It was built in 1150 under the impulse of Henry II Plantagenet, Duke of Normandy and King of England, who founded a royal house in the park of the Rouvaray aux Bruyères. This site, originally linked to a leprosy attested before 1183, was later joined at the Madeleine de Rouen Hospital in 1366, before being ceded to the Benedictines of Sainte-Catherine-au-Mont in 1600.

In 1667, the Chartreux de Gaillon acquired the site to establish a chartreuse. The first stone was laid in 1669, and the site gradually enriched, including the Chartreuse Notre-Dame-de-la-Rose in 1682, as well as the priories of Fresnes and Pavilly in 1720 and 1722. Despite slow constructions, the community dispersed in 1791, during the French Revolution, under dom Nicolas-Albergati Geoffroy, the last general of the Order.

Today, only the chapel Saint-Julien remains of this ducal ensemble. It is home to exceptional 12th-century zenithal frescoes, adorning the vault of the abside and depicting biblical scenes such as the Annunciation, the Nativity or the Escape in Egypt. Ranked a historic monument in 1862, the chapel bears witness to the artistic and religious importance of the site, while the archaeological remains of the Cartus buildings, protected in 1981 and 1991, recall its complex monastic past.

The successive excavations and protections highlighted the original Cartusian provisions: cloisters, monastic cells, gardens, tanks and hydraulic systems. These elements, although partially disappeared, offer a rare glimpse of the spatial and spiritual organization of a Norman Chartreuse, between medieval heritage and transformations of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

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