Église Saint-Michel de Villefranche-sur-Mer, Baroque church in Villefranche-sur-Mer, France.

Saint-Michel Church is a baroque building with a Latin cross plan; its two-bay nave is lit by oculi above the side aisles and articulated by paired Tuscan pilasters. The pale yellow facade with white pilasters and a scrolled stone ornament stands beside a square bell tower topped by a green, red and yellow glazed dome.

Construction began in 1732 when the Bishop of Nice blessed the first stone and was completed in 1757. The building arose during a period when the harbor town needed to expand its religious spaces for its growing population.

The 1790 organ by the Grinda brothers, organ builders in Nice, keeps its case carved by the carpenter Jean Antoine Mangiapan, listed as an object in 1971. Behind the main altar, a baroque frame holds paintings of Saint Michael casting the damned into Hell, Saint Charles Borromeo, Saint Roch and the beheading of Saint Hospice, listed in 1984.

The church stands on Place Félix-Poullan, where a fountain with children drinking is shown in the heritage records; the square is the natural starting point for the visit. The building is municipal property and classified as a monument historique, so the interior is a protected space. Look for the south-east facade and the bell tower, the two elevations documented in the protection file.

The church keeps a life-size recumbent Christ carved from a single fig-wood block in the 17th century by an anonymous galley convict. The sculpture is one of many objects in the building listed as historic monuments by the French heritage service.