Église Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Michel de Lüe, Medieval church in Luë, France.
Église Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Michel de Lüe is a church building in a small village of the Landes region, displaying architectural elements from different time periods. Inside, vaulted naves with pointed arches create the space, while a substantial bell tower with an octagonal spire dominates the exterior.
The parish church of Lüe, first an annex of Saint-Jacques de Labouheyre, was rebuilt entirely between the second half of the 15th century and the first half of the 16th, as the arms of France on a nave keystone suggest; almost nothing of the Romanesque foundation remains. In 1860 the old bell tower was replaced by a massive neo-Gothic tower topped by a terrace and an octagonal spire.
The parish appears as Luna in the cartulary of Dax, and from the 12th century the church stood at the centre of a sauveté whose asylum perimeter was marked by four crosses on 1.36-metre bases, still visible near the church. Inside, a late-17th-century gilded wooden main altar and a statue of the Archangel Michael slaying the dragon, from around 1800, are among the furnishings kept there.
The church stands on a promontory above the village of Lüe; the D140 is not mentioned in the sources, so approach on foot from the village lanes. Four stone crosses on 1.36-metre bases still mark the perimeter of the old sauveté right of asylum around the building. The bell tower is topped by a terrace and an octagonal spire, reached only by the tower stair. The interior is entered through the pointed-arch doorway in the tower's grey stone base.
Four stone crosses on 1.36-metre bases once marked the boundary of the sauveté, the church's right-of-asylum zone; they are still visible near the building. The parish appears as Luna in the cartulary of Dax.
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