Church of Saint-Germain
The Church of St. Germain was rebuilt from the 1450s in a flamboyant Gothic style, of which it is a particularly accomplished example, with contrasting voids and solids, play of light, extreme thinness of the pillars, a broken barrel vault panelled in a continuous interior space. The reconstruction lasted more than a century. Around 1610, it was extended by the reconstruction of the southern transept.
About this building
The plan is quite unusual: rectangular with a flat chevet and west wall, but with a cut-off at the south-west corner that follows the route of the old Roman road Rennes-Angers occupied today by the rue du Vau-Saint-Germain. The beautiful bell tower (1519-1550) that dominates the church was not originally a bell tower, but the belfry tower of the town's guard house, which was ceded to the parish in 1651. The nave, which is quite high, is characteristic of the Breton flamboyant gothic style: light pillars, large semicircular arches, long sandpits at the base of the vault, decorated with monstrous or grotesque figures, as is often the case in Breton sandpits.
