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Heritage classified

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Origin and history

The convent of Sainte-Garde-des-Champs was founded in 1666, when Alexandre Martin, parish priest of Saint-Didier, erected a chapel dedicated to Notre-Dame de Sainte-Garde and a retreat building. In 1699, avignonese priests, including Laurent-Dominique Bertet and Joseph François de Salvador, founded the Congregation of the Missionary Priests of Notre-Dame de Sainte-Garde, active until the Revolution. The site, which was sold as a national property, was then home to a glass factory and then to a magnatery, before being bought in 1818 by Abbé Albert-Venance Morel to install a small seminary royally recognized in 1824.

In the 19th century, the convent developed under the impulse of Abbé Joseph Pougnet, who built the current chapel (1859-1863) and formed generations of pupils, including felibres like Félix Gras or Clovis Hugues, influenced by Abbé Emmanuel Bernard, defender of the Provençal. After the 1906 law, the seminary closed and the premises became a military hospital during the First World War, then a School of Outdoors (1930-1971), before being restored by the Notre-Dame de Vie Institute from 1981.

The site, inscribed in the historical monuments in 1981 for its facades and roofs (including the chapel), bears the stigma of its tormented history: partial destruction to the Revolution, attempted fire by the Germans in 1944 (traces visible on pillars), and recent rehabilitation to accommodate a Theological Studium since 2013. Its current architecture, shaped in the 19th century, combines religious heritage and successive functional adaptations.

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