Our team
La Maison du Visiteur draws its strength from the stability of a multidisciplinary base made alive and dynamic by its various members, who guarantee the spirit of the house.
Hélène RAMIN
When she arrived at Vézelay, Hélène Ramin received confirmation that, if some of our human heritage is still present, like watchmen at the bedside of humanity, it's because it still has so much to say for today. With a multi-disciplinary team, Hélène is inventing ways of bringing the inexhaustible heritage of symbols set in stone up to date for all audiences.
With this in mind, for the last twenty years she has been training young and old alike in cultural mediation by offering them an artistic path: "More than any other, it knows how to articulate and make appreciate in a sensitive and intelligible language, the effort of the mason, the liturgical research of the theologian, the science of the builder, the silence of the monk, the emotion of the pilgrim...".
Hélène Ramin is a tour guide and co-founder of the Maison du Visiteur in Vézelay. Her training at the École du Louvre, combined with the piano taught by Marie Jaëll and her experience of popular theatre in Quebec, have shown her just how much the culture of beauty is an open sesame to the infinite.
Sophie Anne Martin
Sophie Anne Martin's four years of study in the field of global animation have given her a wide range of skills, from cultural animation to management and accounting, as well as different artistic disciplines. As a result, Sophie Anne has worked as a choir conductor, teacher of movement and vocal expression workshops, drawing and musical theatre, cook in cultural venues, SCI manager, costume designer, singer and actress in a variety of popular expression shows...
Multi-talented, her favourite fields are sound and drawing, two vibrations that nourish the joy of living.
After ten years' involvement with an arts association that welcomes people with mental and psychological disabilities, she will be joining the Maison du Visiteur in 2021.
Today, she is a guide at the Maison du Visiteur and runs the " Looking and drawing "She is in charge of "taking care" of homes, fittings and building sites. Fascinated by the capitals and architecture of the Basilica of Vézelay, she has developed the work of the "Gaze" by training in various drawing techniques.
Élisabeth Toulet
A classics teacher in Paris, Élisabeth Toulet left the French education system at a very early age to devote herself to developing arts education for children. She began by organising heritage awareness campaigns for children, notably at the Château de Chambord, before setting up the Festival des Jeunes Années in Aube in 1982. She co-produced a film with the Amerindian community of Pessamit in Quebec, shot with 400 Amerindian, Quebecois and French children on the theme of encounters between peoples.
Following the filming, in 1986 she created theInternational Children's Theatre Academy. In 2015, she published "La Beauté à la rencontre de l'éducation" (Ed. L'Harmattan). At the same time, she leads historical tours of Paris for children and adults and occasionally works at the Maison du Visiteur, which she joined on a permanent basis in 2018, renewing her passion for history and architecture.
Véronique Roche
A native of Burgundy, Véronique Roche has had a very varied career, ranging from social and cultural activities as a children's entertainer and manager, through veterinary assistant to property management.
She joined the Maison du Visiteur in 2011 on the advice of a friend. She is in charge of the administration/secretarial/booking department.
Jean-Noël André
From an early age, the high mountains of the Alps have been a place of renewal and wonder. Learning to harmonise the body between its inner self and the engaging outer world of nature was a demanding school of life. An engineer with Polytechnique training, Jean-Noël André learned the scientific foundations that enable him to adapt to a variety of situations and questions.
Quebec is his adopted home, and deep friendships with people from many Aboriginal nations have shaped his roots and his attachment to this country. In his personal and professional life, he has been involved in a number of intercultural and artistic projects. He worked in a writing and poetry workshop with Jean-Noël Pontbriand, who set up the creative writing department at Université Laval in Quebec City.
Poetry was a revelation that has stayed with him ever since. As a guide and project manager at the Maison du Visiteur for the past seven years, he has worked to bring together the age-old symbolism that mysteriously links the stonemasons of the Middle Ages to the First Nations of North America, and reveals the symbolic links between his country of birth and his adopted land. He is co-creator of and involved in a number of research and reflection circles, notably on symbolic life and personalistic economics in France, Quebec and Lithuania.
Christopher Kelly
During his studies of history at Cambridge (UK), Christopher Kelly studied the roots of fascism in 20th-century Italy and became aware of the extent to which individual, economic and political interests could lead an entire country into violence.
A new perspective opens up for him, with the discovery of the life of Thomas More, chancellor to King Henry VIII in the 16th century. A man who paid with his life for fidelity to his conscience: an example for Christopher of personal integrity, the cornerstone of a just society.
After studying in Paris, Christopher's encounters and experiences in cultural and artistic circles gradually led him to believe in the intrinsic beauty of the human person. This faith became the source of his commitment to projects designed to reveal this beauty.
In the same vein, he has been a heritage guide at Vézelay since 2009. For him, Romanesque symbolism, architecture and sculpture are rich sources of teaching for his contemporaries. Driven by a desire to pass on his knowledge, he would also like to see his commitment extended to the English-speaking world, where he gives lectures.
Gaspard Vincent
Gaspard Vincent is self-taught. He abandoned his higher studies in law and political science to take a closer interest in sacred architecture, religious art and their founding texts. This interest gave rise to a pronounced taste for symbols, leading him to look to the sculptures that adorn France's churches to find a meaning to life.
His encounter with the Maison du Visiteur in 2019, during a stay in Vezelay, was to mark a turning point. This led to three months' training as a guide, followed the same year by a first initiatory trip on the roads to Compostela and Fatima.
As a pilgrim, he discovered the school of silence, the rigour of outdoor life and the simplicity of a daily life far from the tumult of the world. After three years in Portugal, where he combined manual labour with spiritual exercises, a second journey on foot will take him back to France in 2023, from where he will this time cycle to the gates of the Middle East.
Deeply nourished by his experiences on the road, it was in 2025 that he returned to the Maison du Visiteur with a view to a longer collaboration. Gaspard is motivated by one certainty: the need to re-examine what man is saying. For him, the mythological dimension of the Romanesque symbol is one way of doing this.
Arno Cuppen
Born in the Netherlands, Arno Cuppen studied history at Utrecht University. Since 2003, together with his wife and many other volunteers, Arno has been running a hostel for pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela.
They started this activity at Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in the Basque Country and continued it in 2014 at Anthien in the Nièvre region, 25 km south of Vézelay, until 2025.
Since buying a house in Vézelay in 2024, they have concentrated their activities in Vézelay.
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