Abbaye Sainte-Marie-Madeleine de Vézelay

When we were away last month we visited Vézelay. Our main reason for going there was Susan's half memory from a TV documentary of a place that sounded like Vézelay that has a very important late medieval sculpture. Spoiler alert... it's not Vézelay.

The Abbaye Sainte-Marie-Madeleine de Vézelay was originally built between 1120 and 1150. It was sacked by the Hugenots in 1569, and suffered further indignities throughout the 17th and 18th century, and later during the Revolution.

The man who rebuilt Carcassonne, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, supervised a massive restoration undertaken in several stages between 1840 and 1861, during which time a great deal of weathered and vandalized sculpture was replaced. He also built the flying buttresses that support the nave.

Looking at the newly christened "basilica" it's hard to believe that anything of the original remains. It's bloody big, but we found it underwhelming, in the same way that we find La Basilique du Sacré Cœur de Montmartre in Paris underwhelming.

And you have to pay to park.