Collégiale Notre-Dame-et-Saint-Laurent d'Eu, Collegiate church in Eu, Normandy, France
The collégiale Notre-Dame-et-Saint-Laurent d'Eu is a Gothic church standing in the center of the town of Eu in Normandy. It has a tall nave supported by stone pillars, a transept, and a crypt located beneath the choir.
Founded in 925 by William I, Count of Eu, as the collegiate church of Sainte-Marie served by secular clerics, it became a house of Saint-Victor canons in 1119. The church was rebuilt from 1186 to 1240 and dedicated to Saint Lawrence O'Toole, archbishop of Dublin, who died at Eu in 1180 and was canonized in 1225. Fires in 1426, 1455 and 1475 damaged the building; the abbey was suppressed in 1790 and its buildings destroyed, leaving only the church.
The church bears the name of Notre-Dame and of Saint Laurent O'Toole, archbishop of Dublin, who died at Eu in 1180 and was canonised in 1225. Its stained glass was made by the Sèvres glass-painting workshop between 1833 and 1847 under Louis-Philippe, with cartoons by Wattier and Ziegler and designs after Delacroix for the side-aisle windows of Saint John the Evangelist and Saint Victoire.
The church is easy to reach on foot from the center of Eu, close to the town's castle. A visit to the crypt is possible and worth doing, as it gives a different view of the building's structure from below.
The crypt, 31 metres long and 6.5 metres wide, was called the "Saint-Denis of Normandy" by archaeologist Jean Benoît Désiré Cochet. It was restored in 1828 at the expense of the future King Louis-Philippe. Laurent O'Toole's tomb lies just left of the stairs.
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