Serrières, temple et cure, Protestant church building in Serrières district, Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
Serrières, temple et cure is a white-rendered church with yellow stonework, a rectangular plan, and a bell tower topped by a masonry spire and cross. Its west facade has two doors, two small oculi, and a plaque commemorating December 1529. The south facade shows four round-arched bays, and a 15th-century bell is displayed on the lawn.
A Gallo-Roman settlement stood here, and remains of its baths lie about eighty metres east, past the Cité Suchard. In the 7th century a Merovingian mausoleum was built on the site and later converted into a church by adding a square choir; it was enlarged in the 9th century and rebuilt entirely in Romanesque style in the 12th, when the bell tower and north facade were made. Guillaume Farel is said to have introduced the Protestant faith here in December 1529. In 1666 Jonas Favre doubled the building's width, giving it its rectangular plan.
The church is also called Saint-Jean de Serrières. A plaque between the two west doors recalls December 1529, when Guillaume Farel is said to have introduced the Protestant faith here. Until the Temple du Bas was built in 1696, it and the collegiate church were the city's only parish churches.
The church stands in the row of houses in the old town of Serrières, a working-class quarter of Neuchâtel, on a rock west of the Serrière gorge. The mill «moulin de la Voûte» rises behind it from the gorge, and a fountain dated 1857 stands at the foot of the rock. The building is owned by the municipality of Neuchâtel, which is responsible for its upkeep.
The 1891 stained-glass windows were donated by the Russ-Suchard family, not made then as a single set; the glass painter Clement Heaton gave another in 1903. In the crypt, remains of Merovingian graves survive, and a 15th-century bell with a crack probably dating from 1935 stands on the lawn.
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