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Origin and history

The church of Saint-Georges de Limans was attested as early as 1155, when its revenues were attributed to the canons of the Saint-Mari concathedral of Forcalquier. At that time, two churches coexisted in Limans: Saint-Pierre and Saint-Georges, each associated with a separate castral site (lower and upper castle). This bipolarity could reflect a shared seigneurial organization or pre-existing ecclesiastical mesh, with a parish church (Saint Georges) dependent on an independent religious institution.

Between the 12th and 13th centuries, the present church was built in part, as evidenced by its arched portal, curved bay and vaulted nave. A second campaign of work, marked by a late Gothic (almond warheads, refined capitals), enlarged the nave and erected the bedside and the southern chapel. Over time, Saint George became the only parish church after the detachment of Saint Peter at the end of the 13th century, maintaining this status until the Revolution.

Subsequent changes included the opening of the northern chapel in 1735 and the reconstruction of the west gate in 1888. Among its treasures, the church houses liturgical elements of the High Middle Ages (chancel, ambon?), rediscovered in 1955 and classified as movable objects. These pieces, reused in the present furniture (altar, antependium), are among the oldest testimonies of Christianity in Upper Provence. Their exact origin, however, remains unknown.

The building, a communal property since its inscription in the Historical Monuments in 2019, illustrates nearly nine centuries of religious and architectural history, between Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque influences. Its location excented from the present village could be explained by a extinct castral topography, where the seigneurial space ("superior") coexisted with a habitat grouped around the church ("inferiore").

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