Church of Our Lady

Notre Dame Church is a Catholic parish church located in Jambville, Yvelines, France. It is a small rectangular building, with only ten bays, and dates back to the 12th century. Remodeled many times, it is quite emblematic of the small rural churches of the region, whose different parts adopt the sought-after architecture of large contemporary buildings, but are not built with the same rigor, and present many irregularities. Apart from this, the Church of Our Lady has suffered irreparable damage in the past. Both inside and outside, most of the capitals have lost their sculpture, no window remains original, and the exterior elevations have been so radically restored that they retain only a few authentic elements. One can notably point out a squared Romanesque tympanum to the north of the nave. Otherwise, the octagonal Romanesque bell tower and its Gothic stone spire are the only elements of interest on the outside. Inside, the nave and its side aisle vaulted to the same height form an almost homogeneous whole in the flamboyant Gothic style. The base of the bell tower, dating from the middle of the 12th century, and its southern crosspiece, dating from the 1220s and 1230s, have been skilfully restored, eliminating the mutilation of the capitals and the irregularities by reconstituting the architectural polychromy in the taste of the Middle Ages. The chapel of the Virgin Mary, in the axis of the cross, was built at the same time as it, and is fairly well preserved, while the sanctuary, in the axis of the base of the bell tower, has not yet been restored, and does not seem to live up to its vocation. The church of Notre-Dame was registered as a historical monument by decree of June 4, 1926. Then, the bell tower and the Romanesque tympanum were classified by order of October 17, 1938. The church is today affiliated to the parish of "Limay-Vexin", which groups together sixteen communes and eighteen places of worship. Sunday masses are celebrated there approximately every two months, at 10:30 am.