Restoration work at Saint-André Church
A first phase of work in 2013-2014 made it possible to safeguard the church. The work undertaken was aimed at stabilizing and consolidating the faulty masonry. The main vault has been restored and the aisles have been covered with a glass roof in order to bring light to a very dark Romanesque building. This first campaign also served to stabilize in the choir the painted decorations of the seventeenth century, rare in the region.
The work that remains to be done concerns the interior spaces, the layout of the surroundings and the restoration of the facades, including the upgrading of the coating with a fake stone appliance on the entrance gable. It will be taken into account the preventive archaeological excavations carried out in 2017 by INRAP that uncovered external tombs, a part of the square bedside of an earlier building, as well as a fragment of an altar table that attests to the existence of a church erected in the 7th and 8th centuries. The excavations planned on the second phase of the works will make it possible to highlight this primitive place of worship which does not find a comparison in Uzège.
The place and its history: a Romanesque church in the heart of a remarkable site
Located halfway between Uzès and Lussan and about thirty kilometres north of Nîmes, the village of Belvézet and its five hamlets is surrounded by a deep, moon-shaped notch carved by the waters of the Seynes in the limestone plateau. Anchored on a remarkable site both for its natural environment and for its vestiges of prehistoric times, it is home to the Romanesque church of Saint-André, known as the old church.
Built on relics dating back to the seventh century, the building first appeared in the texts in 1272. He suffered great damage during the wars of religion. The reconstruction work of the end of the seventeenth century gives the place the look that we know today. Deconsecrated since the end of the 19th century, the church was sold to a family of Belvézet who transformed it into a wine shed. Threatening ruin, it is bought back in 2000 by the municipality thanks to the mobilization of the inhabitants, very attached to their heritage, and is inscribed in the same year in the Additional Inventory of Historical Monuments
Mobilizing: a mobilized community
The town of Belvézet is mobilizing to restore and revive the old church of Saint-André, symbol of the village and its five hamlets. The aim is to return the church to the people of Belvézet, but also to make it a place of exchanges, meetings, events and cultural events. Thanks to its restoration, its cultural programming will constitute a new unifying element of local life where all, inhabitants, visitors or hikers, will be invited.
Site de la commune https://mairie-belvezet30.fr/ To support the restoration project https://www.fondation-patrimoine.org/les-projets/eglise-saint-andre-a-belvezet