Église Saint-Symphorien de Nuits-Saint-Georges, Church in Nuits-Saint-Georges, France

Église Saint-Symphorien de Nuits-Saint-Georges is a stone church with beige masonry, a tall gabled facade with a circular window, and a square bell tower rising above the transept crossing. The interior has pink-edged stone arches over white plaster, rows of dark wooden pews, and a carved wooden pulpit projecting from a pillar.

The present church was put up in the early 1200s and a Gothic chapel was added on the northeast side about a hundred years later. Protestant troops damaged the building and the whole village in 1576, and repairs in the following century brought a large altarpiece that was later taken out in the 1800s.

The nave keeps a strong Romanesque character even though pointed arches and ribbed vaults show later Gothic ideas moving in. Look at the column capitals near the choir, where flat leaves and simple hooks appear above the pink stone shafts, a detail that connects this building to older Burgundian masons.

Take a slow walk around the outside to see the old cemetery with its stone crosses, some marking families lost to plague. Inside, the floor is uneven in places, so wear steady shoes and allow extra time to move through the central aisle and side chapels.

Look for a fragment of painted decoration near the south pillar of the choir chapel, showing a Crucifixion from the early 1400s. Its figure of Mary recalls the mourning mother from a famous lost sculpture made for the Charterhouse of Champmol, an echo most visitors walk past without noticing.