Saint-Louis Church

Neoclassical in style and based on a basilica plan, the Saint-Louis church will surprise you with its grandeur and its history!

Located on the Place Napoléon in the heart of the Pentagon, it is an unmissable monument, downtown, but also typical of Napoleon's desire to separate Church from State. Indeed, its location opposite the town hall and the courthouse marks the very strong desire to assert that political and legal powers are no longer of divine essence.

His consecration, dated November 3, 1830, will mark La Roche-sur-Yon, and will make official its status as the largest church in Vendée, provided for in the construction plan designed by the architects of Napoleon 1^er, twenty-two years ago.

The church takes its name from that of King Louis-Philippe who reigned over France at the time of its construction.

The church will subsequently be classified as a Historic Monument in 1982. To preserve it as well as possible and with a view to the bicentenary, La Roche-sur-Yon has set up various interior and exterior restoration projects, planned over several years. .

Our Lady of La Roche

All the more precious as it is one of the oldest testimonies of faith in Vendée, this statue of the Virgin in polychrome wood from the XNUMXth century.^e century is preserved in one of the chapels of the church. Holding the Child Jesus in her arms, who himself carries the world, the Virgin is also represented barefoot. It is usually reserved for representations of Christ and the apostles.

Renaissance stained glass

Made in 1872 and 1875 by Lusson and Lefèvre, on the edge of the III^e Republic, the stained-glass windows of the church contrast with the initial imperial austerity and neoclassicism. On the bays of the aisles, the forty evangelical scenes represented in a flamboyant Renaissance style have the particularity of showing Christ dressed in blue, white, and red, a very rare color association in the iconography of the stained-glass windows.

Thus, this characteristic would make the Saint-Louis church a republican church!

Large organs of the Saint-Louis church

The great organs are another major asset of the church and there are two of them. The first, the choir organ, is a Cavaillé-Coll, built in 1884 in Paris. It has eight stops and a drone. He left the platform for the heart in 1985, a century later, when a new great organ was installed there.

This one was made by the Alsatian organ builder Yves Koenig. Nicknamed the great organ, it ranks among the most important in the diocese, with its 40 stops and 2856 pipes. It thus required a complete overhaul of the narthex and the gallery, whose neoclassical style woodwork blends in perfectly with the building.