Église Saint-Côme-Saint-Damien, Luzarches

The Saint-Côme-Saint-Damien church is a Catholic parish church located in Luzarches, in the Val-d'Oise in France, dedicated to Saint Côme and Saint Damien, patron saints of doctors and pharmacists. Its origins are lost in time, and the church bears its current name at least since the 8th century. The oldest part of the church is the barrel-vaulted choir with the apse in cul-de-four, which has elements from the end of the 11th century. Only about 40 years later, the bell tower and an apse were built to the north of the choir. While the exterior bears all the characteristics of Romanesque architecture, the ribbed vaults and the use of the pointed arch in the interior prefigure Gothic architecture. If cul-de-four apses are very rare in the region, churches with both an apse and an apsidal chapel are even more rare. The chapel of the Virgin to the south contrasts strongly with the Romanesque ensemble by its luminosity and the lightness of its radiant Gothic architecture which has reached its peak. This small chapel is not very original, but it is a work of quality all the more precious because its style is practically not represented in the department, and the aisles ending in a chevet with cut sides are the exception. Witnesses of a completely different period, the western facade and the first bay of the nave in Renaissance style are no less interesting, because it is the first creation of the master builder Nicolas de Saint-Michel from Luzon, who strongly marked the religious architecture in the country of France in his time, without ever being satisfied with copying the ancient architecture. The nave without character built temporarily in the 17th century combines all these elements without highlighting them. Its aesthetics was improved by the transformation of the aisles according to the ideas of Nicolas de Saint-Michel at the end of the 19th century. Located in the middle of the last rural sector of the eastern part of the Val-d'Oise, the church of Saint-Côme-Saint-Damien is today at the center of a large parish which includes ten other villages.