Notre Dame des Malades - Église Saint-Blaise

To see in the old church :
- the brown statue of Notre Dame de Malades (the wood is walnut)
- the 19th-century white marble Blessed Sacrament altar, and above the stalls, the four gilded wooden statues of St. Anne, St. Christopher, St. John the Baptist and St. Francis Xavier,
- stained-glass windows dating from 1923: almost all are dedicated to Mary.
The new church was built in 1925 and blessed in 1931. On the outside, the grey aspect of the concrete was concealed by covering it with a coating to give it the appearance of granite. The interior decoration is a unique, complete and highly representative example of early Art Deco.

UNESCO heritage
Notre-Dame-des-Malades is in fact an "extension" of Saint-Blaise church, which in fact becomes a chapel of the new building. This church, designed to cope with the influx of worshippers, was built by Abbé Robert, the parish priest of Saint-Blaise. It is dedicated to the patroness of the sick, but its consecration can also be interpreted in other ways: it is also Notre-Dame-des-Malades, in the sense that spa-goers generously contributed to its construction.
The work, which took place over 31 years from 1925 to 1956, was regularly halted when the coffers were empty, and restarted when donations allowed.
Begun between the two world wars, the church adopts the Art Deco style and new materials for this type of building: reinforced concrete. The asceticism of its exterior disappears when you push open the church door. The light and explosion of color are overwhelming. This is the work of the master glassworkers and mosaicists at Ateliers Mauméjean, who were responsible for the stained-glass windows as well as the paintings and mosaics. And there's no shortage of paintings in the dome, with references to the high places of faith.

Free access.