France's most magical medieval village — a Romanesque abbey in a secret Aveyron valley
Conques is one of the most remarkable small towns in France — a medieval village of 300 people hidden in a V-shaped valley in the Aveyron, whose abbey church of Sainte-Foy (11th–12th century) is one of the masterworks of Romanesque architecture in Europe. The Last Judgement tympanum above the west portal is the finest surviving Romanesque sculptural ensemble in France, and the treasury contains the gold reliquary statue of Sainte Foy (9th–10th century), encrusted with Roman gems and cameos, that is one of the most extraordinary medieval objects anywhere. The village is a stopping point on the…
Conques grew around a 9th-century Carolingian monastery established to hold the relics of the child martyr Sainte Foy, stolen by a monk from Agen in 866 CE (the theft was deliberate and strategic — relic theft was standard medieval practice for building pilgrimage routes). By the 11th century the abbey was one of the four major pilgrim stops on the Via Podiensis to Santiago de Compostela, and construction of the current abbey church began around 1050. The Treasury of Sainte-Foy, assembled over centuries from royal and aristocratic donations, is the most complete surviving medieval pilgrim tre…