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Origin and history

The church Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul (or Sainte-Marie-Magdeleine) is a 14th-century Romanesque building located in Castellet-lès-Sausses, in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence. Built at the top of the village, it overlooks the 300-metre Var Valley. Mentioned for the first time in 1351 in an account of decimes of the diocese of Glandèves, it then depended on the Piedmontese Abbey of San Dalmazzo da Pedona. Its architecture combines a nave of three vaulted bays in a broken cradle, a cul-de-four apse and a bell tower added later.

The building, listed as a historical monument in 1971, has traces of successive changes. The first span of the nave was extended in the seventeenth century to support the bell tower, while a lateral chapel, transformed into a sacristy between 1846 and 1858, was added to the north wall. In 1815, a lime coating covered the cut stones, masking their original appearance. Pastoral visits also reported minor repairs in the 19th century, such as the renovation of the northwest corner of the bell tower.

The church, surrounded by a cemetery and a courtyard, illustrates medieval Provencal religious architecture. Its apse, disconnected from the nave, suggests a multiphase construction or adaptation to a different initial project. Despite modifications (crepasing, addition of the bell tower), it retains characteristic Romanesque elements, such as the broken cradle vaults and its strategic high-rise settlement, typical of the perched villages of the region.

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