Église de Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, Catholic church in Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, France

The Église de Saint-Cirq-et-Sainte-Juliette in Saint-Cirq-Lapopie has a long, low nave with a pitched roof of reddish-brown tiles and a square beige-stone tower topped by a steep pyramidal roof, with a smaller pyramidal roof on a turret at its right. Narrow round-arched windows line the nave, and the church stands on a grassy terrace above the Lot valley. It keeps a Romanesque apse from the 12th-century chapel, while the main body was rebuilt from 1522 on a north-south axis.

The chapel of the La Popie and Cardaillac families was built in the second half of the 12th century on an east-west axis. In the first half of the 16th century a new parish church was raised on the same spot, keeping only the Romanesque apse and turning the axis north-south. In 1522 the archpriest Ramon Fizamen obtained funding from the consuls, and the work was entrusted to master builder Guillaume Capelle until his death around 1538; repairs to the bell tower and stair turret followed in 1548 and 1583-1585.

The church is dedicated to Saint Cyr, called Cirq locally, the youngest martyr of Christianity, and his mother Saint Julitte. The village was the seat of an archpriestry from before the 11th century until the Revolution, with archpriests recorded from 1231; in 1416 the archpriestry was united with the Pélegri college of Cahors, whose syndic was archpriest by right.

Access is through the village from above, with some steep staircases and narrow passages that require patience when climbing. The best views of the building come from various vantage points within the village or from the opposite river valley below.

The church keeps only the Romanesque apse of the 12th-century seigneurial chapel of the La Popie and Cardaillac families; the rest was rebuilt from the first half of the 16th century on a new north-south axis. In 1548 a contract was drawn up to repair the bell tower and the stair turret.