Chapelle Saint-Clément
La Garde-Freinet Historic site and monument
The chapel was built in the 17th Century, as a replacement for a former and much more ancient one. Its origin might go back to a private foundation of an estate of the late antiquity.
All year round, daily.
The capel of St Clement was restored between 1963 and 1967 by the Italian sculptor Marino Di Teana who conceived its restoration around the concept of the Way of the Cross created in glass elements.
At the far end of the choir a big glass cross reaching up to the top symbolizes the triangle of the Holy Trinity. The side walls and the façade have 14 glass-crosses representing the Stations of the Cross. Their disposition symbolizes the walk of the Christ on the Golgotha: falling, stopping, rising, marching until the moment when the Cross, immobile and vertical, announces the end of the torture.
At the exterior under the porch, the entrance is constituted by a big glass slab protected by a forged iron-gate.
The Saint Patron of the parish, pope and martyr of the 1st Century, is commemorated every year in the beginning of May with a big procession, during which the relics of the Saint are transported from the parish church to the chapel.