A fortress within a fortress

When you are the owner of a registered monument, you have the obligation to open your property to the public. You are however, allowed to ask for an entrance fee, and you are more or less free to determine the opening dates and times.

Château and chapelle

For example, the remains of the oldest existing church in Cluny, the Saint-Odilon, are inside someone's residence. In the past, the owner possibly had applied for a subsidy for a restauration, and opens her entrance hall, where a few columns, capitals and arches can be seen, to the public on the two European Heritage Days per year, at a modest entrance fee of 1 or 2 € per person.
In La Chapelle-de-Bragny the castle is privately owned, and within the castle walls one finds a fortified chapel. The set-up is not dissimilar to that of Bezorney (see previous blog). La Chapelle-de-Bragny also once was a doyenné of the abbey of Cluny.
This château has very restricted opening periods. Château as well as church or chapel are open in the afternoon from 1-14 July and from 1-30 September, at a fee of 4 € per person.

The chapel

In my innocence I assumed that the village was named after the chapel, but that is not the case. The Lords of Bragny had as a family name de la Chapelle, and that is where the place name comes from. The church is a beautiful example of early Romanesque architecture. Most likely the church, of which only the apse still stands, was built by a Lombard master builder.
Characteristic are the Lombard bands inside and outside, and the "frise de dents d'engrenage" (saw tooth frieze, my own translation).
During the middle ages there were quite some conflicts between the various Lords, such as the Lords de la Chapelle and the Lords d'Huxelles-Brancion, and in that period the church was fortified to protect the villagers once the Lords were feuding again.

Lombard band and saw tooth frieze

Anyway, our local paper (Le Journal de Saône-et-Loire) publishes every Friday a supplement with all the exhibitions, festivities etc. in the area for the coming week. Ironically this supplement is called Samedi & Cie, dating back to the time when it was indeed published on Saturday. We buy the newspaper every Friday, and that is the reason I found out when the chapel and castle were temporarily opened to the public.
And I certainly did not regret heeding that call!

For a few more pictures of castle and chapel, click here.


Practical information (courtesy of Eduard van Boxtel) :
Former chapel Saint-? (castle chapel) in La Chapelle-de-Bragny, 11th century, 3*

For our own website, click here.