Saint-Emilion Monolithic Church

Saint-Emilion Monolithic Church tickets: which one to buy

The underground monuments of Saint-Emilion can be seen only on a guided tour run by the tourist office, and the ticket covers the monolithic church, the catacombs, the hermitage of Saint Emilion and the Trinity chapel in one circuit of about forty-five minutes. Tours run several times a day in French and less often in English, and they sell out in summer, so book at the office on the main square as soon as you arrive or online beforehand.

The bell tower above the church is a separate cheap ticket, with the key collected from the tourist office and 196 steps to climb on your own. Half-day trips from Bordeaux cost several times the ticket and include the wine tasting most people come for; the town is forty minutes by car or an hour by train and a shuttle. The tourist office also sells a combined ticket with the bell tower and a wine tasting, which is the usual package for visitors arriving without a car.

Visiting Saint-Emilion Monolithic Church: what to see

A Breton monk called Emilion settled in a cave here in the eighth century, and the church that grew from his hermitage was not built but excavated: between the eleventh and twelfth centuries workers cut a church 38 metres long, 20 metres wide and 11 metres high out of the solid limestone of the hillside, leaving pillars of rock to hold up the roof and the town square above it. It is the largest monolithic church in Europe.

The interior is bare, cold and unlit except for electric lamps, with the tool marks of the quarrymen still legible on every surface and the ghosts of destroyed frescoes on the walls. In the eighteenth century the bell tower on the square above began pressing down on the chamber, and steel tie bars were fitted in the 1990s to stop the pillars splitting. The catacombs beside the church hold a rock-cut burial chamber with a dome carved to look like a cupola, and the hermitage preserves the stone seat where Emilion is said to have slept.

Saint-Emilion Monolithic Church opening hours and the best time to go

Tours run daily through the year with a reduced timetable in winter, and the church is otherwise locked. The interior holds at about 14 degrees whatever the season, so a layer is needed even in August. Saint-Emilion is crowded from June to September and during the wine festivals, and the medieval streets are steep and cobbled. The bell tower gives the best view over the vineyards and is open longer than the tours.

Photography is allowed underground without flash. Allow an hour for the circuit and half a day for the town, whose other monuments include a collegiate cloister and a ruined Dominican priory, and whose wine merchants will pour for anyone who asks. The town's macarons, made to a recipe from an eighteenth-century convent, are sold in two shops on the square and are the standard souvenir.