Les Hôpitaux-Vieux - Chapelle Sainte-Philomène

In 2018 > Ariane Epars – Monu­ment

This chapel is a com­pletely mod­est build­ing, both in its pro­por­tions and in its decor: it con­sists of a single nave ex­ten­ded by a paneled choir. A series of paint­ings evok­ing dif­fer­ent epis­odes from the life of the Vir­gin oc­cupy the blind walls of the nave. The chapel is ded­ic­ated to Saint Philom­ena: this young woman was the sub­ject of wor­ship from 1805 to 1961 after the dis­cov­ery of bones found in 1802 in the cata­comb of Priscilla, in Rome.
An in­scrip­tion “Fi­lumena” (tran­scribed as Philom­ena) was taken for the name of the bur­ied per­son, her­self iden­ti­fied as a young vir­gin girl and mar­tyr in the en­thu­si­asm of the time without however hav­ing any his­tor­ical cer­tainty. A paint­ing rep­res­ent­ing this young woman is at­tached to the bed­side wall of the choir.

Text by Joël GUIRAUD

GPS : 46,789706 / 6,369870