Chapelle Saint-Jérôme d'Argelès, Pre-Romanesque chapel in Argelès-sur-Mer, France.
The Chapelle Saint-Jérôme d'Argelès is a pre-Romanesque chapel with a rectangular nave about 5.2 metres long and a narrower, lower apse about 2.1 metres deep, both vaulted. Its walls are built of mostly unworked stones laid in rows, with only the larger corner stones smoothed. A bell gable without a bell rises above the plain west wall, and light enters through a small round window and two small side windows.
The chapel's construction date is undocumented; some researchers place it in the 10th century as pre-Romanesque work, while others date it clearly later. It survived because after the French Revolution several families from Argelès took charge of the church buildings and kept them for later generations.
The chapel is dedicated to Saint Jerome, called Sant Jeroni in Catalan, the language of the Roussillon. Inside, only faint traces of wall paintings survive, too poorly preserved to identify their subject. The building is one of the few in southern France where influences of Visigothic architecture are suspected.
The path to the chapel follows a road and then a gravel walkway that is easy to navigate on foot. The location sits on elevated ground, so visitors should expect some uphill walking when approaching.
The chapel is one of the few church buildings in southern France where influences of Visigothic architecture are suspected. The interior triumphal arch between nave and apse is slightly pinched at its base, so it can cautiously be called a horseshoe arch, a form rare in Romanesque work.
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