"Romanesque art is addressed to the whole person, body, heart and mind, by a more intuitive than explanatory path. It is by the look, the listening, the sensation and the emotion that operates today as in the Middle Ages the meeting with the patrimony of Vézelay, a meeting that can be internally upsetting ".
Hélène Ramin
Our team, our history
We are a small group of passionate architects and art history lovers of the eternal hill and its jewel, the basilica.
With our association "Présence à Vézelay", we have, for ten years, guided visitors in the church of the Madeleine, alongside the Franciscans who were in charge ... and realized our difficulty in answering the unfathomable questions that arises always this masterpiece of the twelfth century, in the limited time of a visit to the basilica and the crowd of great days! The idea came to us to open a place that allows visitors to Vézelay to draw deeper into the extraordinary artistic and spiritual wealth of this marvel of Romanesque art.
The Visitor's House opened in 2003. There are five of us at the moment, a multidisciplinary team. Véronique, our president, has been trained as a guide-speaker, Helen did the Ecole du Louvre, Christopher a master of arts in Cambridge, Elizabeth is a researcher in the sciences of education, Jean-Noel is central.
Every year, young trainees join us. Student guides, students in architecture or art, they enrich our project with their enthusiasm and the questioning of their generation.
Besides, if some of you are tempted ...
Our approach : a fresh approach to heritage from Vézelay
The approach of the Visitor's House is not only cultural. If the discovery of this high place that is Vézelay, World Heritage of Humanity, requires the recall of knowledge (historical, architectural, artistic and, here, religious), we are convinced that any real encounter with a work of art passes first by emotion. Beauty speaks to everyone's intimate.
Our first goal is to facilitate this personal meeting. We offer the visitor tools that address his artistic sensibility, his experience and his active participation.
To open the eyes, to facilitate the feeling seems to us essential to allow everyone to appropriate this heritage.
The accounts of the Présence Association in Vézelay
The association's 2023 accounts were approved during the General Assembly of the Présence association in Vézelay on April 20, 2024.
The simplified presentation of the 2023 operating accounts (and those for 2022):
The simplified presentation of the balance sheet accounts at the end of 2023 (and those for 2022):
The detailed report of the accounts made by the ETC Company, Accounting Expertise Company
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Each membership encourages us to stay on course with this work to update the Romanesque stone, whose harmony and carved words are generous fountains for all the pilgrims that we are. Pay my subscription online