Saint-Philibert church

The full story

Saint-Philibert was built in the 12th century “in the shadow of the abbey of Saint-Bénigne”, its powerful neighbour, but other buildings came before it. In 1923, the remains of an apse thought to date from the 11th century were discovered. In 2024, archaeologists from Inrap uncovered two walls with stones laid in a “herringbone” pattern, interpreted as the corner of a first church founded around the 10th century. The floor of the church of the year 1000 also covered six sarcophagi: four from the end of Antiquity, one with a carved lid, and two from the Merovingian period, between the 6th and 8th centuries.

Its Romanesque origins can still be read despite many alterations. The side portal, in Rue Danton, is decorated with finely carved scrolls of curling foliage from the late 12th century. Inside, simplicity reigns: a nave and aisles covered with groin vaults, plain pilasters, simple capitals and a dome resting on squinches, small corner vaults. Between the 13th and 17th centuries, the church gained a porch, two side chapels and, in the 16th century, a stone spire in the Flamboyant style, with lines that ripple like flames.

It also had its place in the life of the commune. Every 23 June, the eve of Saint John’s Day, the people gathered in the Saint-Bénigne cemetery, in front of Saint-Philibert, elected the mayor, whose investiture for a time took place under the church porch.

Taken out of religious use at the Revolution, the church became a stable, a food store, a saltpetre store and a salt warehouse. In 1825, its apse and side apses were removed to cut through Rue des Vieilles-Étuves, which weakened the bell tower. Listed as a historic monument in 1862, it was fitted out as a cultural venue from 1972. But a heated concrete floor slab, laid in the early 1970s, drew salt up into the pillars, whose stones are bursting. It was to check their foundations that the 2024 test pits went down as far as 3 metres.

Open every year for the European Heritage Days since 2002, it hosts contemporary art exhibitions in the warmer months, coordinated by the Museum of Fine Arts. On 4 July 2015, it became one of the nine Dijon sites included in the “Climats of the Burgundy vineyards”, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.