Figeac The Abbey Church of Saint-Sauveur

Figeac grew up around an abbey founded in the ninth century on the Célé, on one of the roads to Compostela from Le Puy. Its abbey church of Saint-Sauveur keeps a Romanesque nave and a chapel of Notre-Dame-de-Pitié with carved and painted wooden panels of the seventeenth century.

Jean-François Champollion, who deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs, was born in Figeac in 1790, and his family house is now a museum of the world’s writing systems.

Pepin I of Aquitaine founded the abbey in 838, at first subject to Conques. The dispute between the two abbeys ended in 1096, when Pope Urban II, at the Council of Nîmes, declared both independent and placed Figeac under Cluny. In 1329 the relics of the abbey’s patron saints, Vivien and Marcel, were solemnly raised. In 1577 Protestant troops undermined and burned the pillars and brought down the choir, part of the transept and the vault of the nave. Keystone inscriptions record the slow repairs, one of them “Dieu m’a réparé 1701” (God repaired me, 1701). One capital of the west porch, demolished in 1823, is now at The Cloisters in New York. Saint-Sauveur belongs to the Figeac parish grouping, and the diocese of Cahors named it the grouping’s jubilee church for the Holy Year 2025.

The chapel of Notre-Dame-de-Pitié was the chapter house of the abbey, built about 1250, and became a chapel in the seventeenth century. Its carved woodwork, by the Delclaux family of Figeac, frames a Pietà, probably by the sculptor Jean Launet, with the dead Christ on the Virgin’s knees. Around it are the Descent from the Cross, the Entombment, the Virgin of the Seven Sorrows and the Christ Child asleep on the cross, and the altar front shows the Last Supper. On the hill above the town, the church of Notre-Dame-du-Puy has a walnut altarpiece of 1696 that rises to the vaults, with paintings of the Assumption and the Coronation of the Virgin.

Further reading: Conques: A Pilgrim’s Guide to the Abbey of Saint Faith; Rocamadour: A Pilgrim’s Guide to Our Lady of Rocamadour; The Way of Saint James from Le Puy: A Pilgrim’s Guide.

• The abbey church of Saint-SauveurWith the chapel of Notre-Dame-de-Pitié.
• The Musée ChampollionIn the house where he was born.
• The church of Notre-Dame-du-PuyAbove the town, where tradition places a hawthorn that flowered in winter; altarpiece of 1696.
• The windows of the apseOf 1872, with Saints Isidore, Verny and Fiacre, patrons of farmers, winegrowers and gardeners.

• Via ConchaeThe Way of the Shell, eight daysDay VI, Conques to Figeac · Day VII, Figeac to Cahors, across the Quercy

About forty-five minutes by road from Conques.

• ConquesThe Abbey Church of Sainte-Foy, about 18 miles as the crow flies
• RocamadourThe Shrine of Our Lady of Rocamadour, about 24 miles as the crow flies
• CahorsThe Cathedral of Saint-Étienne, about 31 miles as the crow flies
• AubracThe Dômerie of Aubrac, about 47 miles as the crow flies