Chapel of Saint-Jean du Liget

The chapel of Saint-Jean du Liget, or chapelle Saint-Jean-du-Liget or chapelle du Liget, is an ancient chapel located in the commune of Sennevières, in the Indre-et-Loire department of France. It was probably built around the middle of the 11th century, although this dating is still debated to within a few decades, which maintains the uncertainty as to which monastic order, Benedictine or Carthusian, founded it. Similarly, its dedication to Saint John, which could apply to another monument, is disputed. Until the French Revolution, it was attached to the Liget Carthusian monastery, when, already in ruins, it was sold to private owners and then to the State. The latter undertook its restoration in the 1860s, after it was classified as a monument historique in 1862. The chapel has been owned by the commune of Sennevières since 2007. Its unique initial layout (rotunda preceded by a nave) is reminiscent of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, as discovered by the first Crusaders. The interior walls of this chapel's rotunda - the only part of the monument to have been preserved, which also had a nave - were covered with Romanesque polychrome frescos, the surviving ones depicting figures of saints and major biblical scenes from the Marian cycle.